Wise Observer

Commission Junction is one of the 800 pound gorillas of Affiliate Marketing. CJ is part of the publicly held ValueClick, which earned $39 million last year on marketing programs, including affiliate programs, email marketing and software for advertising agencies.

CJ handles affiliate programs for a lot of the big names, including Home Depot, Yahoo and Citibank.

Can you make money with Commission Junction? Like most affiliate programs it depend on the theme or niche of your web site, and how well you match your content and the CJ programs.

Our spider ran through the site recently, and I’ve made a list of the major categories and their average Earnings Per Click (EPC). You will recall that EPC is calculated by taking the total commission payout for the advertiser and dividing it by the number of clicks that advertiser gets, so EPC measures how profitable each click is for the publisher. We used 7 day EPC, which measures EPC across the last seven days.

The spider also only saves the top ten advertisers in each category/subcategory, and since some advertisers are in more than one category/subcategory it tends to skew the results a bit (higher). We came up with an average of .56 (fifty-six cents) per click across the board averaging every category and subcategory.

We’ve created a metric we call True EPC or TEPC, which measures the actual Earnings Per Single Click, rather than the earnings per hundred clicks that companies like CJ use to make the numbers look bigger.

Note: I only included the first 5 categories here, and only part of the data. All of the data can be found at www.affiliateblog.com.

Here’s a very interesting list by category:

Category True EPC / Top Ad & TEPC

Financial Services $ 2.41 / Get Smart $ 32.98

Insurance $ 1.25 / American Life $ 2.98
Home & Garden $ 1.16 / Sunsetter $ 8.21
Web Services $ 1.13 / Yahoo Hosting $ 3.75
Computer & Electronics $ 0.87
Accessories $ 0.80
Health & Beauty $ 0.76

What does it all mean? Well, to me it means that if you have a website that gets visitors interested in Loans, Insurance, Sunsetter awnings or Yahoo hosting, you should be a member of Commission Junction.

More generally, if you think you can get decent clickthrough on Finance, Home & Garden, Insurance or Web Services, I would include some Commission Junction ads.

Some commentary on the top 4 ads: what strikes me right off the bat is that the little Yahoo text ad at #4 pulls almost four bucks. I actually signed up for that program myself, and I’m going to put it on this site when I get the chance. My calculations tell me that 1:5 to 1:7 clicks results in a signup.

What’s the flip side of all this data? There are categories that aren’t so great at CJ. If your site is about web services advice, handbags, new age, car travel or rentals, commercial insurance or weddings, I’d look elsewhere. Another way to interpret the data would be to say that the marketers CJ has for those categories don’t pull well. Still another would be that the type of sites that sign with CJ just don’t attract the type of people that would click on ads in those categories. No matter how you slice it it still comes out the same it seems like CJ isn’t the place to look to fill that ad space.

Not content with my mountain of data, I opened the firehose a little more. I ran a program that compared the average EPC for Pay-per-sale programs vs. Pay-Per-Lead programs. For per-sale, the EPC was .36. For per-lead it was .67. Intutitively I would say that advertisers pay more for sales than leads, so the clickthrough on leads has to be much higher on CJ, which also seems correct since less of a commitment is required from the visitor for a lead than a sale. So if you have a choice in programs between sale and lead, take the lead program.

So what did we learn here? It seems to me that if your site visitors would respond to banners or text links about mortgage financing, insurance, gardening or web services, add some CJ banners to the mix. What the heck, add them anyway if you have room, because experimentation is important to success in affiliate marketing. If you have a site with content that fits those categories or is a general interest or entertainment site, there are many good programs to choose from at CJ.

Lastly, I did a quick comparison of the average Adsense payout (using 80% of the average of keyword bids for different categories), and Adsense comes out a better EPC about a quarter of the time. So check Adsense first before you put up a CJ ad that has an EPC of a dollar or more. A big banner ad vs. an Adsense ad may seem like a good idea because more exposure may translate into more clicks, but you can fit three Adsense text ads in that banner space.

There are many hidden insights in the data, and I encourage you to go to the website, print out the page and take a look. There might be some terrific-paying programs you can ad to your website.

I’d like to put together a free weekly email service that provides stats like the ones on this page. If this is something you might be interested in, drop me a line.

Matt DeAngelis runs AffiliateBlog.com. Matt is the former CTO of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. As a foot soldier in the Internet revolution, Matt devised the technology behind many of the most successful ad campaigns of the time.

Blogging is a fantastic tool that all poker affiliates should be using to build their businesses. Blogs are virtual traffic magnets that can be instrumental in generating a massive income as a poker affiliate, so if you’re not taking advantage of this strategy I would recommend that you begin today.

Since their inception in the mid-1990s, blogs (or “weblogs”) have continued to grow in popularity due to their ease of use and ability to share information to an extremely wide audience.

With blogging, you don’t even need webhosting or a domain name to get started. Services such as Blogger give you the ability to create your own online blog in literally seconds, all at no charge. You can even customize your blog templates and add advertising for your poker affiliate programs.

Think of a blog like a journal, where you can write about online poker events and tournaments, offline games, and whatever else you can come up with. The content that you publish to your blog will be picked up by search engines and you’ll benefit from a steady stream of visitors as a result.

Other poker websites will also have the ability to syndicate your content on their sites through the use of RSS technology. Don’t underestimate the power of online syndication, it can become a massive source of traffic.

Here are a few tips to assist you as you’re starting your new poker blog:

1. Consider your audience

Consider who your readers will most likely be and create content that would interest them.

2. Include Photos

Photos make everything more interesting, including blogs. If you’re blogging about Vegas, include a picture of a casino or the strip.

3. Keep Your Blog Simple

Make sure that your blog is easy to navigate and isn’t cluttered. A clean blog design will be appreciated greatly by your visitors.

Blogging can be an extremely profitable and enjoyable way for poker affiliates to promote their businesses. Tap into this extremely powerful technique today and reap the rewards it will bring to you and your poker business.

Learn how to become a super Party Poker affiliate and generate a massive income with poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/

The History Of Frequent Diner And Customer Loyalty

Since the creation of restaurants, owners have always wanted and needed to know who their customers are and what they like to eat and drink. This information is vital to the ongoing success of a restaurant.

In addition to knowing their customers they sometimes gave away food or drinks in an attempt to buy favor with those customers. While this worked in most cases there were no controls in place to prevent abuse by employees nor were there any requirements other than the good mood of the owner.

Abuse of this method of rewarding customers was rampant. Employees would take advantage of this and give the same favors to their friends. This drove food and bar costs skyward, while making the employees rich through additional tips from their happy friends.

In an attempt to control this madness someone came up with punch cards and stamps. The abuse of the system slowed but was not stopped. How many of us have gotten an extra punch in our cards or extra stamps from a waiter in an attempt to get a better tip? This happens daily in restaurants with this system.

Then came the counterfeiters of these cards and stamps. Recently the Subway chain had to end their 20-year old Sub Club stamp program for this very reason.

The Need To Manage Frequent Diner And Customer Loyalty

The need is great.

As the business owner you need your point of sale system to provide accurate customer information on buying habits, number of visits, frequency of visits, entice repeat visits and purchases through reward programs. Do all this while managing the programs and preventing “sweet hearting” by employees.

No small task. Especially with the creative employees that so many restaurants employ.

The Solution For Managing Frequent Diner And Customer Loyalty

Some point of sale software comes standard with a frequent diner or customer loyalty package that does all these things and more.

Some Frequent Diner Module utilizes secure methods of tracking your guests and their buying habits. You establish a database of guest’s information with an account number. This number can be their phone number or any number system you desire. However, the most popular and most secure method is through magnetic cards with your logo on them. These cards act as a constant reminder of your restaurant by having your logo in their wallet or purse.

These Frequent Diner Module will secure the reward programs you put in place and preventing the employees from giving away food. Rewards are giving only when earned through purchases, frequent visits or for items on your menu that you wish to highlight. The establishment of reward programs takes your employees out of the game and puts you in charge.

You may establish multiple reward programs and assign them to customers on an individual basis. Not every frequent diner has to belong to every program. You have the choice of which customers are involved in which programs.

Reward programs can be established to highlight a new item, feature a portion of your menu or encourage your customers to come back during a specific meal period. Programs can be created to reward customers after a specified number of visits or for how much they spend.

Rewards can be a % off, $ off, a specified item free, or other creative rewards. You have the option to have instant rewards or make the reward good on their next visit.

The Benefit Of Managing Frequent Diner And Customer Loyalty To You

Imagine being able to market directly to your customer base. Imagine having detail knowledge of their buying habits how often they came, when was their last visit, their anniversary and birthdays. With this information you could create marketing materials targeted at your customers and bring them back more often.

Imagine having the ability to establish reward programs to build meal periods that have been traditionally slow. If you need to build your lunch business, establish reward programs based around this meal period and then distribute your frequent diner magnetic cards to businesses and their employees in your area. Don’t just sit back and wait on someone to walk in your door. Go out and get them!

Imagine having the ability to highlight low cost menu items and use them to reward customers.

In real dollars and profits the frequent diner module can generate huge results. Let’s say you have a $10 ticket average per person with a 35% food cost. If you created a program that rewards a customer with a free appetizer every 5 visits. Appetizers have an average price of $4 and have the same 35% food cost.

If the person ate alone for those 5 visits you would have enjoyed $50 in sales and $32.50 in profits.
Your customer has now earned a reward of a free appetizer on their next visit at a cost to you of only $2.60.
This means that you have a net profit of $29.90 on sales that were increased through rewarding the customer for repeat visits.
If this guest brought a date then your profits would have been $62.40 with a cost of the program of only $2.60!
Imagine the rewards YOU will get for increased sales of your repeat customers.

About the Author

Jerry D. Wilson is Director of Internet Sales for DirecTouch Restaurant Point of Sale. With over 25 years of hospitality point of sale experience, he has written several articles explaining the benefits of touch screen and retail point of sale software. Please visit DirecTouch Do It Yourself Restaurant Point of Sale or DirectRetail Retail Do It Yourself Retail Point of Sale for more information.

There’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing. This is true,
however, only to those are seriously and zealously working on
his affiliate program. Success in affiliate marketing varies in
every individual affiliate and for the most part, it depends on
his will and perseverance. No matter how good an affiliate
program is, it will not prosper if the affiliate marketer does
not pay the price of hard work. One must exert extra effort
especially on the aspect of promotion. Nothing will happen if
the links or banners would just lie idle in a web page, an
affiliate must be able to convince the visitor to click it and
proceed to the business site to buy the products. No
click-throughs means no income for an affiliate marketer.

You can actually generate a full-time income by means of
affiliate marketing and you can do it at home, and yes, even
while you sleep. You must have a good web site to begin with. It
must have good promotional and informative contents, pleasing
design, inviting banner ads and all other important elements in
an affiliate marketer’s web site. It would be great if you have
exhausted other means of advertising such as newsletters, email
marketing, message boards and ad listings such as Google
AdWords. You just have to go online once in a while to check
your site and update it and to watch over the development of
your marketing program. Does this sound so easy? It can be this
easy if you have planned your affiliate program well and have
taken all the steps towards success carefully and diligently.
Now, there’s a tool you can use to help you go through the
program with ease and confidence, the Ad Tracker. For many
experienced and successful affiliate marketers, the Ad Tracker
is a key to a successful affiliate marketing program. What
precisely is an ad tracker? It is a marketing tracking software
or program that allows you to trace and take note of every
click-through made by visitors of your site and by other
customers who got your referral link. There are ad tracking
service providers as well, so you will just have to pay them to
do the tracking for you. With the ad tracker, you can keep an
eye on the progress of your marketing campaigns even offline.
This tool or program is especially helpful if you are engaged in
several affiliate and pay-per-click programs and have placed ads
in emails, pop-ups and pop-unders, message boards, auto
responders, Ezines, forums, several web sites, surveys and
various ad service providers.

Of course, you don’t want all your efforts to be put to waste so
you want to make sure you are getting paid for your hard work.
Likewise, you want to make sure every dollar or cent you
disburse in your advertising campaigns is wisely spent. With the
help of the ad tracker, you will know accurately how many and
which of your links where clicked on, how many clicked on your
links, how many of your emails were opened and how many of those
who opened your email clicked through the business site and
purchased a product, how many products were purchased, which of
your banner ads or links brought the most leads and sales and
many other pertinent facts and figures you need.

Sales records and all data stated are necessary in any business
as this could determine if your affiliate program is still worth
continuing. This would also help you determine which of your
marketing strategies is most effective and which is most
beneficial for each product or service you are promoting.

Every decision and plan you make must be well grounded on facts.
That decision or plan of action may not be the best, but it is
something not to regret about when you had valid reasons for
coming up with such decision or plan. You cannot just decide to
terminate your affiliate program, just because you don’t earn
big in an instant.

If you are serious with affiliate marketing, again and again,
keep in mind that your success lies mainly on promotion and your
hard work. If you don’t seem lucky enough to convince many of
your site users to buy the products, don’t be disheartened and
jump into a conclusion that your affiliate program is a failure.
If it works for others, it could work for you, too. Know whether
your advertising techniques are effective or not, which works
best for your program and which doesn’t. Get an ad tracker to
help you know all these and you’d surely be on the right track
towards success!