Affiliate Summit 2008 West Wrap Up
My thoughts on Jason’s thing, all the other things and the PPC Ask an Expert session I hosted.
Entries Tagged as ''
Commission Junctions EPC Demystified?
I’ve been doing this about a year, and never did quite get CJ’s EPC. Earning Per Click?? NO F—in way it is generating $230 per click! (I would think to my self)
Well turns out that is earnings per 100 clicks (or so I was told at Affiliate Summit).
It kinda makes sense in the sick twisted way CPM makes sense.
CPM (Cost Per 1000 Hits — 1000 = Roman Numberal M)
EPC (Earnings per 100 — 100 = Roman Numberal C)
So.. EPL = Earnings Per 50? LMAO
Ok so anyways, this is useful in setting your starting PPC. (Price Per Click — Normally Pay Per Click… but w/e)
Lets say a program on CJ has earnings of $235 EPC.
This would mean they make 2.35 per click on average.
Say the payout of the offer is $55.
We now know how to get the conversion rate.
(If my math/logic is wrong tell me)
100 Hits Results in $235 in sales
$235 / 55 = 4.27
Which means 100 Hits Resulted in a 4.27% conversion rate (sounds about right…)
Lets cut that in half. (cuz I think conversion rates and things like that are ALWAYS inflated by merchants — and it helps boost profits for me by giving me a different goal to reach for)
So now I have my conversion rate of 2.135%
Multiply That by the Earning Per Action (in this case $55)
$55 * 2.135% = $1.17425 (pretty decent starting price….)
Now I cut it in half
$0.587125
My starting bid for this offer would be around 60 cents.
And then I would adjust up or down once I had my own statistics.
Now an easy formula.
EPC = Earning Per 100
CPA = Cost Per Action
PPC = Starting Pay Per Click (Adjust later)
PPC = EPC/CPA/2/100*CPA/2
And if you play around with the math you can drop out the CPA
PPC = EPC / 400
I’ll be revisiting this since it looks too simple.
Man Is My Wife Awesome
We are eating dinner (which she made for me while I was laying in bed – watching tv). And she says “You know what? My Ideal Night Right Now Is To Play Rock Band With You And Then Watch Stargate SG-1 Till We Pass Out.”
I suppose I should attach a picture or something… hold on, let me get one.
Here, we were in France and she thought this thing was cool.
Crazy Things Affiliate Managers Do
Seriously. I get the weirdest emails. But sometimes I get absolutely great emails from Affiliate Managers.
Clickfraud class action lawsuit and yahoo lowering min ppc
Well guess what I got in my email.
Yup, anyone who advertised on Miva, Lycos or searchfeed may be entitled to credits (or a refund, I’ll have to read harder when I am awake)
Some lawyers made over a million dollars to make Miva and company refund traffic that people can claim was fraudulent. No word on how to prove your fraud traffic. They just have a form for you to submit how much traffic you got that you paid for that you think was fraudulent…
I think this is crazy. I never had a problem getting a refund from these guys when I asked for one. Somehow the lawyers and so on are making off with some nice coin while everyone else is filling out a form… *sigh* Well I better check the details on my history with these people and see if I can get some credits out of this….
I’ll look at the details later and post more if there is anything worth talking about.
Oh yeah.. something about yahoo no longer requiring a minimum .10 bid on search (if you have a good quality score). LOL, only for search though. I rarely pay that low for search anyways.. Their content network is still stuck at a minimum .10 (good for them.. the content network isn’t that great anyways. may as well charge more for it… WTF.. lower the min on the content network and raise the min on search… higher quality should cost more.. )
Affiliate Summit Day 3 – Video (cuz I am tired)
After fighting quicktime and much searching I finally found a solution. The camera records in big quality MPEG1 Muxed.. quicktime pro can’t shrink/convert them down without loosing the audio, thus.. no sound.
Solution Free Software From Apple: MpegStreamClip
Ok, now that I have won that battle, time to post a few videos.
A Bunch of Affiliate Summit Pics and Descriptions can be seen on flickr here.
Blue Man Videos.. from the Tao Party
I met a bunch of awesome people, I’ll try and get specific in future posts..
Ian, Mark, The SOB Guy 
, Shay (From Isreal–dude you have a site for me to point to?), David, and of course the famous people.. Shawn, Jim, John, Amit, Wil (always a fun speaker to listen to), Andrew, (I am sure I am leaving someone out, sorry if I did)
Affiliate Summit Day 2 – Notes From SEO Session
Build my own DMOZ?
SEOMOZ blog is good
Speak at Colleges about your expertise for free (they will link to your site)
Meta Descriptions Tag ( Put offers in it.. like Free testdriver or whatever) dont waste time on keyword meta tag
meta tags are low in importance
meta keyword will/may apply for adsense/contextual ads
Yahoo Search Assist is better then google’s
MSN AdCenter Excel Plugin cool
Do Keyword research before you write the content
Make “How To” videos (real, helpful videos) that are good you will get links…
Wil – Good Speaker he loves MSN’s adIntelligence
Affiliate Summit Day 2 – Notes From Domain Session
GeoTarget Domains..
CityNameAuto.com (for example)
Check the latin market
Affiliate Summit Day 2 – Notes From Keynote
Notes From Keynote:
-KeyNote (unimpressive speaker, but I found one good ides from it)
How to do well
1) Find Spammy Site
2) Make a non-spammy version
When asked about what kind of affiliate marketing he doesn’t think is spam. He said:
I like ads to be labeled ads, and said in the same breath “I don’t know alot about your industry.” (when talking about affiliate summit) If he doesn’t know much about the industry, why is he telling us we are garbage?
Hey! I won $100
Affiliate Summit Day 1 – Meet Market, Parties
Wow, quite a day. Spent several hours at the Meet Market (where you stop by everyone’s desk to say hi and get to know people)–this is different from the booths and so on that all the exhibitors will have tomorrow. I met a ton of people there, traded cards with everyone. I had a few meetings already scheduled through contacts I made with the affiliate summit confab networking thingy.
The ShareASale party was a blast. I meet a lot of the “famous” guys in the industry. I’ll post daily pics for a while when I can. But right now, I am finally tired, and am going to crash.
Today was essentially running around saying hi to people I don’t know and finding out what they do and just trying to be a nice guy. It was the first time I have ever had to go and network at an event. Usually in the past I was just the tech guy and others were the networkers. It was a first for me and I completely enjoyed it.
My guide to networking (at a networking event–this won’t work at, say the movies):
1) Find someone who isn’t talking to someone else (they will usually be standing around looking– sometimes they are looking for a friend, other times they are just lonely)
2) Say Hi, I am John (use your real name, duh) and shake their hand.
3) Ask them what they do.
4) Care what they do, and just chat with them about it. (If you don’t care it is obvious– you can’t fake caring about people)
5) Ask them for their card, trade cards if it is appropriate.
Where else can I talk about subjects such as Snow in Minnesota, whether a guy with my same name looks like me (our noses are identical), Why the US and Iran have issues with each other, the finer points of industrial printer drivers, ways to drive PPC traffic, European affiliate marketing, video chat and holy cow.. so much other cool stuff I am probably leaving stuff out. Anyways it was fun, and much thanks to shareasale and everyone who helped in hosting it.
Talk To Me
Even though it may say offline, I may be online.
