The MMN Issue #1 Interview

Alright alright, I’m caving in but only this once. A ton of you guys didn’t sign up for my newsletter the first time around and missed out on the interview I had. I’ll be a nice guy and for this time only, I’ll publish the interview for everybody to see. SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER AT THE TOP OF MY BLOG. It’s the last time I’m going to post a newsletter as a blog post. Don’t come crying when you want the next issue’s newsletter.—

What’s up everybody? Here marks the first issue of The Make Money Newsletter with me, UberAffiliate. I want to give you guys some extra content for being loyal members and subscribers, so our first issue is going to be an interview with one of my all-time favorite affiliate managers, Fraser from CX Digital.

Fraser was my very first affiliate manager over a year ago when he was with Azoogle. He helped me as a wee lad and still helps me now, only at CX Digital. He knows his stuff when it comes to affiliate marketing, probably the smartest affiliate manager I know. So if you apply to CX, make sure to request him as an AM. Alright, let’s get straight to the interview.

Where do you see affiliate marketing going in the next 5-10 years?

Oh man, the two years I have been in the industry I have seen so much evolution its almost impossible to imagine five, let alone ten years into the future. I see Europe and South America as a huge opportunity for US based affiliates to start looking into. I think many of the smaller affiliate networks will go under, or consolidate with a larger parent. While networks will be able to serve smaller affiliates, the super affiliates will move more into working directly with the advertisers. As for traffic sources, arbitrage will continue to be a method of driving traffic, but I think CPM arbitrage is really the future for those smart enough to manage these types of campaigns. As the engines continue to make it more difficult to run affiliate links, affiliates will be forced to build more long term content-rich sites to remain ranked in the paid search. With that said, the advent of Facebook apps shows that we cannot even imagine how creative affiliates will find effective ways to drive huge amounts of traffic to CPA offers.

You were my affiliate manager from the first day I started in affiliate marketing. I’ve come a pretty long way since then and you’ve been there for it all. On your end, what did you see me doing that made me grow so quickly? I can talk about my experience on my blog all I want, but you’re one of the best persons out there who had an “outside look” on everything.

Now that you’re big time, we can joke about you pinging me every time you got a new lead when you were just getting started. You bugged me every day for more info, and I helped you in the learning process because on your end I could see you were reading up on every affiliate marketing blog, forum, etc and I could see you were willing to put in the hard work and not expecting me to give you the magic formula. However, you kind of treaded water doing about a hundred bucks a day for a few months and it was when you found that large niche of KW’s that had zero competition was when you really had your first decent success. I think when you finally saw what worked you were able to scale that up big time!

Now you’re from CX Digital, what makes your network better than all the others? What do you have to offer that makes you unique and not labeled as “just another affiliate network?”

Well other than me? LOL Basically we’re the most aggressive network out there right now, getting guys on weekly payment terms quickly, beating other networks payouts, and going after the offers that our affiliates want. We have an experienced affiliate management team that works a lot closer with our affiliates to optimize campaigns. We all have the mindset that it has to be profitable for the affiliate otherwise the revenue is not going to last long term.

How important is affiliate confidentiality to you in a network? Keeping things like affiliates’ payouts, promotion type, landing pages, etc. from any other affiliate managers or affiliates.

Trust is extremely important to CX Digital’s relationship with its affiliates. A large part of that trust is ensuring that the above things, plus all of the other tips and tricks that they divulge with us are kept within the conversation. I keep the information I provide to other affiliates very general. I want to help all of my guys, but it cannot be to the detriment of any others. There are basic elements that steer an affiliate in the right direction as to how best to run a campaign and that’s what I stick to. The fact that an offer is doing well is something I want to share with my affiliates but the specifics of an affiliates success on the offer is nobody’s business.

What’s the best thing new affiliates can do when they first join a network and have no idea what to promote, or where to start?

The best thing is to get on the phone with your affiliate manager and start discussing what is currently performing well on the network. Have your affiliate manager send you a top offer list (which I do weekly for all of my PPC affs) and read, read, read. There is more than enough information available out there to get a good idea of how to start. Then just start testing, build yourself a good sized list, set your budget and start generating some data for optimizing.

In your opinion, what makes a good affiliate manager?

A good affiliate manager has the affiliate’s best interests as their number one priority. You can push crap offers on affiliates all day long, but if they strike out a few times in a row with your recommendations they won’t be running anything with you. It’s the same with campaigns that drive a lot of revenue, but may not be profitable. A good affiliate manager recognizes that its not only important to do volume but it also has to have positive ROI for the affiliate. If it’s not working but has potential, we work together to optimize a campaigns landing pages, KW’s, ad copy, etc. to take into the black. A good AM also knows the strengths of their publishers and knows exactly who would do well with each campaign. Finally, clicks and leads are 24 hrs/day and the best AM’s are available at all times.

What’s hot right now that you’d recommend for your new publishers to test out?

CX Digital is extremely strong in dating, there is a ton of volume available in the market and the niche continues to grow, so it is a good start. I have several dating campaigns including Fling.com, eHarmony, and True.com that I really want to expand out and am being very aggressive with payouts. We are also continuing to bring out a range of International Crush type offers including Australia, Canada, South Africa and the UK shortly. Finally, start thinking about Mother’s Day. We did extremely well with FTD Flowers for Valentines and expect the same type of volume potential with that and Funcards.

Alright Fraser, thanks for taking the time to answer those questions. I’m sure they’ll help a lot of people. To all the readers out there, I hope you enjoyed the first newsletter, make sure to let me know what you think about it! Either e-mail me back or drop a comment on my blog.