Category Archives: Affiliate Marketing

Graham Gibson, Of Central Coast Nutraceuticals Speaks Out On Ftc Charges

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This past Friday, I had the opportunity to speak to Graham Gibson, of Central Coast Nutraceuticals , who is the target of a FTC investigation charging, among other things, with deceptive advertising and consumer fraud. He had reached out to me that day, wanting to make sure that his side of the story was told. I have to admit that at the time I wasnt sure I wanted to call him before the FTC revealed its case against him. Weve seen the press releases every time some peddler is charged with a crime, they all say the same thing they didnt do this, they didnt commit these crimes, they didnt defraud consumers, the FTC has it all wrong. So, while I was going to call him eventually to get his side of the story, I wasnt in any hurry. Im glad I called because Mr. Gibson has a real story to tell, and strange enough doesnt completely deny the charges against him and his company.

Central Coast (BBB “F” Rating Here) sells Nutraceuticals which is a made up word for diet and supplement related products that fall under a wide-berth of products from stuff to flush out your rear-end to berries that make you constantly erect supposedly. They are not to be confused with Neuticals, which are a brand of testicle replacement for Dogs. The comapny should also not be confused with Central Coast Pharma which Gus from Psych works for. For while they employed over 150 people in Phoenix Arizona and were one of the top suppliers of Acai related diet products. The model at one time was pretty simple people would sign up to get a free trial, paying only a small fee for shipping and handling. After they received the product, a large percentage wouldnt return it or cancel the subscription and thus be charged on a monthly basis for the product to be sent to their home, regardless if they actually took the product, or wanted it. Ive covered this model, often called continuity marketing or negative option marketing.

Gibson told me that on Tuesday, August 10th, he was raided by the FTC along with a group of Federal Marshals, local police and attorneys following a two year investigation of the company that included numerous interviews with his employees, customers and advertising partners. He was presented with a very large packet of materials that detailed the accusations and accused him and his company of a variety of things from consumer fraud to deceptive marketing to being the guy on the grassy knoll. Lets put it this way: on Tuesday you would rather be the subject of a pigmy porn film than be in Mr. Grahams shoes. Despite this, Mr. Gibson on the phone was very contrite, honest and REALLY wanted to share his side of the story.

According to Gibson, he had already taken steps to change his business and was on the front line of making changes to the industry. He had already settled with the Arizona State Attorney General a year earlier and for almost two years had changed his business model, had taken steps to be fully compliant and even hired FTC experts to advise him on what was legal, legit and compliant. The charges the FTC were accusing him were from over two years earlier, and many of those issues had already been fully resolved and that some of the specific complaints were from customers that had already been refunded. I run one of the most honest businesses in the industry, claimed Gibson and have even been working the last year on an organization that would help other companies in the industry compliant. The FTC is trying to make an example out of us, because we were one of the leading companies in this part of the industry. There are ads all over the place that are much worse.

Mr. Gibson then made it clear that he felt the industry was rife with fraud and deception. He pointed out that currently there are tons of ads on mainstream sites like MSNBC through ad networks such as Pulse360 that make obviously misleading claims. He pointed out that if you go to those sites, you will get tons of links to fake blogs or flogs, a practice that according to him, he did not allow. It was very clear that while he accepts some of the responsibility, he changed his practices 18 months ago but even then many of the issues came from his advertising partners. Mr. Gibson even went as far to call himself a victim of the scummy practices of affiliate marketing companies and their partners. He points out that you can go to many major properties right now and see really deceptive advertising that is promoting both direct response companies and sometimes major brands without the explicit consent of the advertiser. He is very honest about his complaint: that no matter what he did, display and affiliate networks would consistently violate his instructions over and over again.

Whether or not you believe Mr. Gibsons story, he brings to light the issue that we have all talked about. In our industry, who is responsible for the actions of publishers, affiliates, websites, ad-networks? Every time the New York State, California or Florida Attorney General goes after the dozen or so Scam Kings we hear the same thing coming out of their mouths: we werent responsible, it was rogue partners Its the same type of deniability we hear in organized crime trials. Perhaps there are some companies that genuinely are not responsible, but at what point when month after month, year after year when your partners are committing fraudulent practices, can you continue to pretend to know nothing? If someone is generating millions of dollars in revenue, are we really to believe that you are clueless how? Those in the industry who have been around as long as I have all know that this deniability is often nothing but complete nonsense. Do I honestly believe that Mr. Gibson never knew that his affiliates and ad networks were doing questionable things? Probably not. However, I do believe that at one point he made it clear after being sued by the AZ Attorney General that these practices should stop and found that many of his partners just kept on promoting his product anyway they pleased not caring if they burned him.

For those that dont know, this week is the Affiliate Summit in New York, gathering of all sorts of performance based marketers. Affiliate Marketing, while at one time was the realm of Amazon readers recommending to friends what books to buy and getting a commission from this, has turned into something else. The idea that the industry is hundreds of thousands of affiliates making money for companies is incorrect. Anyone who is in this industry knows that often even on the CPA/Affiliate networks it is just a few people, often less than 1% of the applicants who actually make the money for the network. Yes, there are great opportunities for anyone who wants to be innovative and in long hours to make a great living in this industry and a large part of Affiliate Summit and the affiliate industry is based on that, providing real services. Still, there is a huge part of the industry that is only about making the quick buck, screwing the consumer, hurting the client, and then moving on. How many times do we need the same scummy players in our industry brought into court for participating in the same scummy acts?

Here is what is going to happen, if we dont make the changes industry wide and refuse to work with these companies. The FTC and various Attorney Generals will rightly continue to go after anyone involved with these schemes, scams and devious practices. Unfortunately in these suits, sometimes innocent people, such as affiliates who may not know better will be hurt. Advertising networks that just take the advertisements and pretend not to know what is happening on the back end will be named in these suits (as they have already). Great companies will be harmed because they are part of the same industry, because they have a similar product, no matter how legit they might be. As is already happening, companies like Facebook will continue basically ban affiliate networks, ban performance based marketing. If you didnt know, Facebook over a year ago banned display ad networks on their site, after testing them, and finding an overwhelming amount of complaints based on viruses, popups and other issues. Now not a single display network can be involved with Facebook because of the actions of a few ad networks. More and more companies in the future are going to follow Facebook. With news coming out in the media of reputable marketers hacking Google and major dating sites spamming Craigslist, it is no wonder that more and more companies are banning outside advertising.

What needs to be done to wake us up enough that we pay attention to the immense fraud in our industry? Do we need to wait until the FTC requires all marketers to have licenses and pass ethics exams? Do we need background checks? If we do not wake up now, the FTC, the government will take action and force us to make changes. Until then, expect me doing more and more interviews with marketers who businesses have been shut down by the government.

Combining Affiliate Marketing and Google Adsense to Increase Profits

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Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running? Or is your website the only way for you to earn income? Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman’s products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer’s ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site’s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant’s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

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Main Drivers Of A Successful Affiliate Marketing Project

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There are a lot of misconceptions and false notions about affiliate marketing or online marketing ventures. And if you are one of those who are fascinated by the prospects of turning in millions of dollars overnight as what is being claimed by a lot of affiliate marketing gurus, then you must restrain yourself and consider the fact that for every one affiliate marketer that hits the pot of gold, there are almost 98 individuals who are pushed by the wayside and end up in total failure.

Affiliate Marketing – A Great Way to Earn Passive Income

Affiliate marketing remains to be the best option for a lot of people who want to start earning extra dollars online. With the right plan of action, an aspiring affiliate marketer will be able to put things in motion and start earning income within a short period of time. However, there are several caveats that you need to take into account, lest you want to suffer the same fate as that of the 98 percent who fail even before they get things started with their online marketing venture.

Affiliate marketing is not just about finding the “right” product that you can “sell” online. Beyond the search for the product or service that you will “sell” online, you have to channel all available resources to promote the said products or services to the right segment of the market or target audience on the Web. A common mistake of affiliate marketers is their perception that most people browse the Web looking for products or services. The truth of the matter is that we search the Web for information and solutions to a wide range of concerns and needs. Most people are not concerned about the product or service that you are “selling” and what they want are solutions and answers to their concerns and problems.

Thus, you may not be able to obtain the desired response if you appear to be a hard sell and end up with a Website that looks more of a smorgasbord of adverts than a useful reference or source of important information and data.

Sell the Idea or Solution

It is not enough that you are driving more traffic to your Website or blog. Of course, in learning the ropes of the trade, you will discover one important performance metrics of affiliate marketing and this is conversion rate. While most experts suggest that we must work to increase traffic and improve our clickthrough rates, we have to remember that we need to obtain actual orders to generate income from our affiliate marketing.

Instead of selling the product or service, you have to find ways to make an effective pitch for the solution or idea that you are advocating. Try your best to provide the information and data that can help you convince your readers to consider the answers and solutions that you are presenting to them. Once they “buy” the idea or solution, then you will most likely get them to buy the product or service that you are promoting.

Key Online Marketing Tools For Affiliate Marketing

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If you know the 4 ready and hands-on online marketing tools, your affiliate marketing can witness immense success. With so many internet marketers selling their products and services, some great systems can really help if you know how to use them. Making money online is not much of a problem these days as the tools are there to help you out. They are basically the capture or the squeeze page creator, autoresponders, the ad tracker and the URL rotator.

Squeeze page creator

For building your opt-in list, the squeeze page creator is something you cannot compromise on. An attractive web page is the first thing that catches the eye and keeps the traffic coming to your site more engaged. If your webpage is full of twitches and animations, the real subject matter of your web page could get hidden. And visitors to websites do not have the time to check out if you are really worth or not. Without a good opt-in list, your material will simply float and you need an expert capture page creator for the job.

Autoresponders

The first impression is the best impression and everyone wants an automatic response from the website they visited once they check it out. Attractive web pages are simple and they allow the visitor to stay engaged rather than get distracted from the real issue. To get the most out of the prospect list requires putting an auto responder which can do loads for affiliate marketing. You need to develop an ongoing relationship to turn prospects into customers. It can help educate your prospects regularly about your products or services.

Ad tracker

By just putting in an ad doesnt help for affiliate marketers as you need to keep track of them. You need to know how much is generated and without it, you would be a blind advertiser in online marketing. Affiliate marketers need to known how their advertisements are working and what they need to do to ramp them up. You need to know whether the ad got zero hits or a substantial number of hits. It is not at all difficult to use a tracker, but you need to know how to analyze the results of the ad tracker to know how effective marketing is and how it is running.

URL rotator

You need the URL rotator for doing split testing and promoting multiple affiliate products on a rotational basis. You need to do that for establishing ad-coops for your down line affiliates. Your best bet would be to get an easy to manage URL rotator like the plug in profit stuff. It is an excellent marketing tool that can do loads for your online marketing, advertising and promo needs. By using the 4 tips including the ad tracker and the autoresponder, your affiliate marketing can be helped in loads as these are great online marketing tools.

Getting The Most From Affiliate Marketing

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Affiliate marketing is a method of making money online that continues to offer opportunities. An affiliate program is an arrangement where affiliates are used to bring traffic to a website. When someone clicks on an advertisement or link on the affiliate’s website and makes a purchase from the advertiser, the affiliate is compensated with a commission.

Affiliate marketing is a form of online marketing that is sometimes overlooked, but has the potential for enormous success. Affiliate marketing can be very successful, as in the case of Amazon.com. Although they did not invent the concept, Amazon has used this method to provide excellent results for the company and their affiliates. The Amazon program has been used as a model for many affiliate programs.

The affiliate marketing model of online marketing is used by a wide range of businesses, from large ecommerce sites interested in brining more traffic to their websites to smaller businesses and bloggers using affiliate marketing to monetize their blogs. When the ads are relevant to the affiliate’s website, they are able to achieve the best results.

Affiliate Marketing provides benefits to both the publisher and the advertiser. For the advertiser, this method is a cost effective advertising solution. The advertiser only pays the affiliate when a visitor to the site makes a purchase, so you aren’t paying for ads that may not bring results. This method is great for controlling advertising costs and only paying for results and advertisers often experience an increase in overall sales for relatively little investment.

The arrangement also benefits the publisher, or the affiliate. The affiliate is able to generate an additional revenue stream simply by directing traffic to the advertiser’s website. The affiliate has the potential to generate significant income when they advertise for products or services that are related to their niche because the affiliate is then able to provide targeted traffic to the advertiser, which results in more sales, and more commissions for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is relatively easy to maintain and manage with the right online tools. The publisher, or affiliate, places a banner ad on their website that links to the advertiser’s website. When someone clicks on a banner on an affiliate’s website and then makes a purchase from the advertiser, the affiliate gets a commission for that sale.

Depending on the program, affiliate marketing provides a fixed amount of money for each action or purchase or a commission that is based on the percentage of the sale. In either case, the commission is only paid after the visitor clicks through to the website and makes a purchase.

Media Trust offers an effective affiliate marketing program that connects advertisers with publishers. Our service is popular with advertisers and publishers. Advertisers are able to control costs and the pay for performance model means there is no expense unless there are measurable results. Visit our website to learn more about Media Trust’s services.

I hope you like this article. For more information on affiliate marketing, you can visit www.netcreatorz.com.