My Azoogle Test

After listening to WebmasterRadio.fm lastweek I got inspired to spend more time communicating with my affiliate program managers. On the show, the guest speakers said the number one thing they would recommend to start improving your earnings was by getting the help of the affiliate programs themselves. And you do this by having a good relationship with your affiliate manager.

Well in my case, I thought I would try Azoogle.com. I hadn't really done much with them in the past, and thought this was as good of time as any to get started.

I contacted my affiliate manager at Azoogle and inquired about some offers. She gave me some recommendations on which programs paid out best, and some placement ideas. I went to work adding the new creatives to my site.

My approach was to show the ads to highly targeted traffic. For instance, if someone is reading my insurance company reviews, then I would be sure to show them some offers from various insurance companies. This technique is of course very successful, and was helping me pull in a 15% conversion rate on some of my programs.

Well utilizing this same approach, I marketed a few of Azoogle's offers. After a few days I had sent them a few hundred highly targeted clicks. No payouts. Not a big deal yet. I know some of my programs can take weeks to post payouts. I contacted my affiliate manager to confirm the payout schedule of the offers. She confirmed they should payout real-time.

Ok. So my hundreds of highly targeted clicks I sent them didn't convert one single payout? I thought I would try a simple test. I had a friend sign up for one of the products through my site using my ads. I figured if I got paid for the sale, then I would simply ask them to refund it from my account since I was just doing it as a test.

Well as you might guess, I was never paid a commission for my friend's test purchase. Where did my commission go? Who knows. My guess is the merchant and Azoogle are keeping it.

Moral of the story? Don't waste your time with big name affiliate programs like CJ (Commission Junction), Amazon, Azoogle, etc. They have too many layers of folks with their hands in the pot for you to make any money.

Find those smaller affiliate companies. Those that sell just a few products, or better yet, only sell their own products. This helps you cut down on the number of folks dipping on your commission, and less chances of lost/missing commissions.

I know it can be a lot of work testing and finding all of these gems, but trust me it is worth it. Don't waste too much time with an affiliate that doesn't pay out. Do the test like I did above to verify if they are legit. If they payout, keep working to promote them and see how far you can take it. If they keep your commission, drop them like a bad habit.

Azoogle Update

Well I've finally been accepted into Azoogle after weeks of confirming my identity. I seriously think I had more trouble getting into Azoogle than I did getting a U.S. passport.

So my first few days of experimenting with the program have not been very successful. I ran a few programs in a highly visible section of my site. I thought I would just try some ROS (run of the site) ads. No user targeting for specific products. Well day one was not too shabby in regards to click-throughs. I had about 75 clicks for a particular product that I thought most my users would like. Well I received ZERO conversions from these 75 clicks. That is not good...=)

I know better than to waste my time on ROS advertising, but still I always try it out because I get lazy. To make money with any of these programs you have to target, target and target some more! This above test is a perfect example of what not to do. Don't just throw your ads up on the site and wait for the money to roll in. Do your homework up front. What are your users looking for? Perhaps you have 250 users a day looking for and finding a page on your site about VOIP. Well that page would be a great place to market any VOIP related products. You get the point.

By finding these gem pages throughout your site, you open the door to utilizing multiple affiliate products at the same time, in a highly targeted, and hopefully more lucrative way. Trick is to have some good webstats software. And then study the data until you go blurry in the eyes.

Then of course you test as many niches as you can until you find one that sticks and pays. Once you find those gems, re-direct your attention to growing that program and that content on your site.

Azoogle Affiliate Program

I've heard great things about the Azoogle affiliate program. It comes highly recommended from Shoemoney, so I figured it was worth checking out. I've heard they have some of the most generous payouts in the business.

So far my experience has been that they are very picky about who they approve, which I think is a good thing. I've been going back and forth with their reps for a week via e-mail to try and prove I own the domain I am applying with.

As it stands now, they want me to send a screen shot of a receipt showing my purchase/renewal of my domain. Not sure I can dig that up. If I ever get accepted, I'll be sure to post a follow-up. I'm very interested to see how well this program works. The more revenue streams the better!