The internet is powered by advertising dollars.  If it wasn’t for advertisers like us, the top 3 most-visited websites on the internet, Google, Facebook, and YouTube, wouldn’t have a viable business model!!!

There’s hundreds of Ad Networks out there that collectively deliver billions of impressions every month.  I’ve tested many but have found few that are geared toward Direct Response Marketers.

Based upon the insights of our audience, friends, and my own biases, below are the 2012 winners!!!

Managed Media Buys

#1 US Inventory

Wam is opening its doors to the public in November.  They’re a small group of highly experienced media buyers that have been around for 4-5 years.  I highly recommend Wam!

Wam! has massive domestic reach and can get ads approved on the fly.  Nearly all of the inventory serving is on direct buys.  Wam! also works with a lot of publishers on a CPA basis!!!

#1 International Inventory

Ted Dhanik, owner of EngageBDR, is the largest affiliate in the world.  He is a Direct Response advertiser, affiliate network owner, and media buyer.  Ted’s team knows how to blow an offer up internationally!!!

EngageBDR is also the #1 display network in CA, AU, UK, FR, IE and BR per http://quantcast.com/bnmla.com.

CAUTION:  before starting a managed media buy with EngageBDR, make SURE your offer is backing out.  They can blow through the min. spend of $25k in an hour!  I suggest you start with First Impression, the self-serve solution.

Technology Top 3

#1 Media Math

#2 Dataxu

#3  Appnexus

DISCLAIMER:  I recruited both Wam! and EngageBDR to sponsor Direct Response.   I felt that these Ad Networks would add enormous value to our audience.  It took some pushing, but I got the commitments.  Their ranking is not based on their sponsorship.  Before I take a sponsor live, I personally vet them to make sure it’s the best fit for our audience. 

During any conversation, it pays to listen more and talk less.  As the old saying goes, “that’s why God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth.”

I’ve found that during phone calls, especially when they get heated, that the easiest way to say less is to do the following:

1.  While the other person is talking, hit the MUTE button.

2.  Do NOT unmute until there is a silence for at least 5 seconds.  This will prompt the other party to talk more and for you to say less.

Always Say Less than Necessary

“When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control.  Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.  Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less.  The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.” – Robert Greene

I’m in the process of ranking the best Ad Networks for direct response advertisers/affiliates.   Looking at both self-serve and managed solutions.

Here’s a list of Ad Networks that I’m reviewing:

Ad Blade

Pulse360

Adknowledge

EngageBDR

Yabuka

Advertising.com

Wam Media

CPX Interactive

Before I publish my rankings, I want to hear your thoughts?  Any additional Ad Networks worth considering?  Please comment.

In the past year we’ve seen tectonic shifts in the affiliate marketing industry.   The days of the wild-wild-west are over, and emerging from the rubble are a handful of solid players in the online direct response/affiliate marketing space.

Through feedback from our audience, my personal experiences, and the insights of industry leaders, we have ranked the top CPA Networks in the world:

#1 CPA Network In The World

NOTES:  ”Amongst Chaos, Leaders Stand Strong!”  Clickbooth has held a dominant position in the CPA space for several years now, and has really invested in building a great culture.  Like any fun roller-coaster, they’ve had their ups and downs, while emerging as the best ride in the park!!!

Clickbooth is focused on exclusive affiliate and advertiser relationships.  They house some of the highest volume affiliates in the world that will only run traffic to Clickbooth advertisers per exclusive affiliate contracts.

This year At Cost Fulfillment is sponsoring their party at Ad Tech + exhibiting across from their booth at ASW.

#1 Health & Beauty CPA Network

NOTES:  Ran by former CX Digital Affiliate Managers, OasisAds is dominating the health and beauty side of affiliate marketing.  H&B is by far the most profitable sector in the industry.

#1 Broad Range Products/Services CPA Network

NOTES:  Jason Akatiff (Smaxor) has mentored me on media buying, affiliate marketing, and optimizing for higher conversions.  Ads4Dough has focused this year on dating, financial lead gen, and other broad range affiliate offers.  I’m really proud of Jason’s resilience through the changing landscape of affiliate marketing and view him as an honorable leader in the space.

#1 Mobile CPA Network

NOTES:   Several high volume affiliates, network owners, and advertisers have said great things about MobAff.  Plus The Angry Russian is a pretty cool dude.

#1 Email CPA Network

NOTES:  Ronen is a pain in the ass to deal with, but he’s a pain in the ass for a reason: he runs a tight ship.  You’ll never meet a more honest, honorable, and consistent mailer than Ronen Hamatian.   If you can make it to Ronen’s top 3 list of offers performing well on email, then you will enjoy MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE volume via the Millionaire Affiliate Network.   If you don’t make it to the top 3, you won’t gain yield.  Feast or famine

Additional Top-Notch CPA Networks

Mundo Media

Ads Direct (health & beauty)

Convert2Media

W4

CrushAds (email marketing)

BlueTrackMedia (incent)

I’m in the process of ranking the top 3 CPA Networks in the industry. So much has changed.

Before I publish my rankings, I want to hear your thoughts?  Please comment.

Ok, so you’re getting ready to spend years of your life invested in a new dot com startup.  You’ve set out on a path to conquer your industry and will do whatever it takes to win.  The opportunity costs in time, money, and energy are enormous.  Trust me, I get it.

I can’t emphasize this enough, INVEST in a badass domain name that you build your entire business around.  The domain doesn’t have to have ANYTHING to do with your industry, just make sure that it has the following characteristics:

-  It’s a .com domain name.  I hate .net and .org domains (yes, this is a .net and it bugs the hell out of me) because the .com’s get a ton of FREE traffic from people searching for it.

-  Buy 1 word or industry specific combo names.

This year we have completed a number of strategic 1 word domain acquisitions, including COMPLETED.com   One word .com domain names gain instant credibility in the marketplace.  They are expensive and rare.  Afterall there’s only 1 COMPLETED.com in the world!

Having a premium 1 word domain is going to cost big bucks.  But hey, you’re either on Fifth Ave. (or Rodeo Drive, your choice) or youU’re not. If you build a site at completedprofilesocialsite.com, you’re making it really clear to the surfer that you didn’t invest much money into your domain…so what type of investment did you put under the hood???

Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists LOVE sinking money into dot com companies with premium domains.  It helps build the case for an easy exit later on down the road.

BOTTOM LINE:  Build your business around a premium, world-class domain name.  If you can’t afford one today, work your ass off so that one day you can

Do you know what drives me to get out of bed every day with fire in my veins?  It’s the same thing that drives me to work 18 hours a day, weekends, and holidays.  It rents space in my mind when I’m with my family and hanging out with friends…

It’s the most precious and sacred liberty We The People have.

It’s The First Amendment.   Taken from Wikipedia:  ”The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.”

When I was younger I always wondered what all of the Constitutional Law gripe was about.  The importance of freedom of the press and freedom of speech was completely foreign to me.  Who really cared about all of this crap, I mean after all it’s something that we all kind of take for granted…that is until we experience a grave miscarriage of justice in our lives and don’t have a way to have our voices heard….

Let me tell you, the most precious right we have is The First Amendment.  Freedom of the press allows Americans to oust corruption, voice our views, and change public opinion.  It allows for James to put Goliath in check!

Look back 10 years ago to 2002.   Newspapers, magazines, and radio were thriving media channels.   The barrier-to-entry to the media was so high that it was prohibitive for 99.9% of Americans.

Fast forward to 2012.  Oh boy have things changed!!!  These days an average joe can out a corrupt government worker with 3 clicks on an anonymous complaint board.  Or an unhappy laborer can start a strike via YouTube.

When a story is launched on one of the many channels available to us, we have the ability to take it “viral” and reach millions of fellow Americans at little to no cost!!!  That my friends is the beauty of The First Amendment!

I’ve toiled away relentlessly for the past 3 years to build a very strong media network.  With 1 call or email, we can launch an all-out campaign to broadcast a story all over the world.  The buzz that it creates has the ability to significantly improve the reputation of an individual, increase conversions, and create enormous positive buzz around an issue.  On the flip side of the coin, the media effect can get someone indicted, terminate a corrupt government employee’s job, or turn millions of people against an injustice.

This my friends is The New Media!

I encourage all of the readers of Direct Response to take part in The New Media.   Harness its power and embrace your liberty.

Here’s some insight into the New Media:

1.  Online News Networks:  Newspapers are defunct.  These days when people want instant access to the news, they jump online.

The Direct Response team has acquired, built, and partnered with a litany of online news websites.  With 1 click we can launch and syndicate a story across thousands of other news sites.  These stories instantly rank in SERPs.

Here’s an example of an online news website that is operated a well-known affiliate marketer: The Inquistr.

2.  Bloggers:  We don’t know anything about blogging, do we  Bloggers are more trusted than celebrity endorsements.  Our team has spent countless hours developing relationships with over 400 PR3+ bloggers spread across dozens of industries.  One of my clients couldn’t believe how quickly we broke a story on the #1 political blog in Pennsylvania.  Hell, all of us bloggers band together.  They send us stories, we send them stories.  What’s the old saying, you scratch my back…

Here’s a quick story about how effective blogging is.  I launched a story on Direct Response about a bully I knew from my childhood.  The story went viral and cost this man his job and prohibited him from gaining new employment.  He contacted our admin to take the story down.  The message never gets to me and the story stayed up…

A few months goes by and I finally catch wind of what’s happening, discovering his issues with employment.  Hell, this is a guy that I became friends with in college.  The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him in his adult life.  I took the article down and apologized for the heartache that it caused him.

The lesson learned here is an important one:   The New Media effect has broad implications.  An innocuous article has the power to travel the globe and create disaster.  Before publishing content online you should carefully consider the ripple effects it will create.

3.  News Wires:  Press releases are one of the greatest vehicles to break a story.   With the advent of massive distribution channels like MarketWire, BusinessWire, PRWeb, etc., it is now easier than ever to blast out your news across the globe!

I highly recommend that you retain professional, journalistic writers to create your releases.  Effective press releases are part art, part science.

4.  Minisites:  Creating exact match sites that have social media activity, keyword specific content, and strategic backlinks can easily rank online for search terms.  i.e.  Do a Google search for “Rick Santorum.”  On page 1 is Spreading Santorum, an egregious listing which has undoubtedly caused enormous harm to Rick Santorum.

Engaging, highly controversial minisites gain and hold rank in SERPs.  Here’s a great story RE Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s Google challenges.

5.  Social Media:  Tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, LiveJournal, Tagged, Ning, and MeetUp allow us to share information across the world.  In the past 2 years social media has become so relevant that Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s algorithm now use “social signals”  when ranking digital assets.

When promoting a cause, social media is most effective when you have teams driving consistent daily activity across all major channels.  i.e.  Our team will send out signals via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and several other SM channels on a daily basis.  We formulate the messaging in an engaging fashion that creates followers, fans, and likes.  The viral phenomenon from social media is amazing!!!

My team has acquired and is in the process of building out some very exciting social media tools.  Stay tuned for our latest acquisition, Completed.com!!!

6.  Bookmarking:  Taken from Wikipedia: “Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online.  Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.It also helps to promote your sites by networking with other social book markers and collaborating with each other.”

There’s a number of programs you can purchase to automatically bookmark content on sites such as Digg, Reddit, StubleUpon, and Delicious.  We use Bookmark Demon (cheesy sales page but great product).

7.  Guest Posting:  The best way to build relevant, highly authoritative links is through guest posting.  In a nutshell, our guest posting campaigns are tiered:

Tier 1:  Highly relevant and engaging guest posts on industry specific PR5+ websites.  Google loves these articles and treats each link we build like gold.

Tier 2:  Engaging guest posts placed on non-industry specific PR3+ websites.  Google values the links that we build off of these articles, however the links don’t carry nearly as much weight.

Guest posting is FREE and allows the common man to rank stories above the Associated Press!

8.  Public Relations:  Welcome PR 2.0.  Traditional PR firms are either dead or evolved.  New age PR firms pitch the media with SEO in mind.  This is a great way to build links on authoritative sites such as TechCrunch, Topix, and The Huffington Post.

Through deep rolodexes these agencies are able to shortcut their way to national press.  My 2 favorite firms are Edelman and SSPR.

9.  Complaint Boards:  Anonymous complaint forums are one of the most effective ways to air out dirty launch.  Well written complaints that strategically place the name of the offender in the title and body can gain & HOLD RANK for highly competitive keywords.

Moreover, due to federal law (Communication Decency Act of 1996), complaint boards have little to no obligation to take down libelous content.  You can take legal action against the author of the content, but the forums themselves are pretty much immune to  civil liability.

Here’s a list of the top 10 most effective complaint boards:

1. PissedConsumer.com
2. ComplaintsBoard.com
3. RipOffReport.com
4. ScamBook.com
5. ScamHunter.com
6. ComplaintWire.com
7. Scam.com
8. Complaints.com
9. Yelp.com 
10. MeasuredUp

10.  Online Forums/Message Boards:  Online network community building is a fantastic way to align people to a cause.  Industry or interest specific forums often create a cult-like following.

This is what a PR nightmare started on an online forum looks like:

Step 1:  A new, highly controversial subject is raised.

Step 2:  Members of the community start to chime in.

Step 3:  Strong responses create buzz.

Step 4:  Bloggers start chiming in on the subject.

Step 5:  People start commenting on the blog posts.

Step 6:  Tweets, YouTube Videos, Facebook posts start running wild.

Step 7:  The AP picks it up and blasts it across millions of viewers.

Step 8:  Litigation ensues, causing more and more activity….

Meet Sanjay Sabani

A few years ago I met up with my friend Sanjay Sabnani at a Think Tank event.  Sanjay is a serial entrepreneur with a longstanding passion for online network community building.   He acquired his first online message board, General Mayham,  in 2002.  He continued acquiring forums until he decided that it was time to focus on turning this portfolio into a business with the launch of CrowdGather in 2008.

As the moderator of dozens of popular forums, Sanjay opened my eyes to the effectiveness of forums.  In a nutshell, Sanjay has direct access to millions of forum members.  He can reach them through Moderator posts, emails, and group messages.  The possibilities are endless…

I highly recommend that you start your own forum.  A great place to acquire well-established forums is Flippa (my favorite place to buy & sell websites).

BTW, my favorite online marketing forums are WickedFire, IMGrind, Stack That Money, and WarriorForum.   Unless you’ve been living under a rock or are new to the industry, you’ve probably already checked them out

11.  Wikipedia Writers:    Wiki is the #5 site on the web and attracts 450,000,000 users per month.  For an online reputation management professional, Wikipedia is the hardest website in the world to suppress.  It’s a true bear.

My partner works with a team of established Wiki Authors that have the ability to create, edit, and moderate Wiki pages.  I highly recommend working with long-time Wiki editors that are trusted inside the Wikipedia network.  It’s a great way manage Wiki results!

The New Media has leveled the playing field.  Join the community today and start having your voice heard!!!

Are you thinking about opening an online business?  Looking to launch the next dot com mega hit?

If so then take a step back and look at where you’re located.   Before getting entrenched in a location, it’s important to discover whether or not your environment is conducive to your industry.  i.e.  Wyoming might not be the best place to find seasoned sales executives.

The best locations to start internet based companies in the US are as follows:

Sales Teams

1.   New York, New York

2.   Chicago, Illinois

3.  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Programmers

1.  Seattle, Washington

2.  San Francisco Bay Area, California

3.  Los Angeles, California

Business Developers

1.  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (my top choice due to the Wharton School of Business)

2.  Redwood, California

3.  New York, New York

It’s amazing how fast an industry can change when new regulations come down the pipeline and old regulations are enforced.

Just 3 years ago the Affiliate Summit was dominated by CPA Networks.  Azoogle, Copeac, CX Digital, and NeverBlue threw decadent revelries, boasting their unprecedented success.  Hubris born of success, these affiliate networks extended credit to shady advertisers, took on unprecedented risks, and went on with the same ole same ole…

Fast forward to today, the aforementioned networks are either out of business, going out of business, or doomed for worse.  At the 2012 NYC Affiliate Summit the few affiliate networks that were left over had changed the name of their business models from “CPA Network/Affiliate Network” to “performance marketing network.”   The usual suspects that exhibited  looked worried, suspicious, and overall uncomfortable.  Who can hardly blame them considering the zeitgeist of the times.  In fact, one of the well-known network owners (name confidential) told me in confidence that they’re in the process of folding up shop.  I don’t blame him, and am confident that his talent will take him far in life.  The end of an era….

There’s 3 reasons for the collapse of the CPA Networks:

1.  FTC civil actions against advertisers/affiliates/networks.

2.  Visa/MC tightened up their restrictions on merchant accounts, making it uber-difficult for small to medium sized advertisers to get approved for processing.

3.  Bad, non-diversified business models that were overwhelmingly dependent on free trial/biz-op advertisers.

The exciting news is that the wild-wild-west affiliate marketing days are over, making way for viable affiliate offers.  This year’s Affiliate Summit had a diversified group of vendors, traffic sources, and useful resources!!!  It was very exciting to see an industry focused on creating marketing programs that convert + add value to the consumer + pay heed to compliance.  That’s worth waking up to!!!

In the affiliate marketing world, free trial offers are all but dead.  The few that exist out there have low caps, scrub, or are off limits to 99.99% of affiliates.   The advertisers that still push trials are extremely well capitalized tier-1 brands, i.e.  Sensa, Force Factor, etc.   If you’re a run-of-the-mill affiliate there’s no way you’re gonna get your hands on these offers.

There’s still quite a few skin offers floating around as trials, notably because the trial/continuity model works well in that vertical.  Still though, it’s hard to get these offers up unless you are very well capitalized, and only a handful of seasoned affiliate have access to them.

While hard sales have been floating around the affiliate marketing world for years, they rarely gained traction.  The reason is that the offers with the highest return on affiliate’s traffic investment (free trials) will always gain yield.  It only makes sense for affiliates to run offers that will make them the most money.  That’s why free trials garnished nearly all of the sales on these channels.

With few trials in the market, traffic sources that historically didn’t back out hard sales are now backing out hard sales all day long!!!!  This is fantastic news because 1 hard sale is equivalent to 5 trial sales.  That’s right, hard sales are worth 5x that of trials.

Hard sales are working both domestically and internationally.  In fact, I was talking to Justin from At Cost Fulfillment last week about their distribution.  He noted that they’re manufacturing and shipping more CPS Green Coffee Bean Extract and Raspberry Keytone domestically than they had ever imagined.   Sure enough, I browsed around MSNBC.com, Weather.com, and other high volume media channels and quickly found a number of CPS advertisers with S I C K presale pages!!!

I am a HUGE fan of hard sales for the following reasons:

1.  When properly built, these offers are instantly profitable.  The average profit I’ve seen is around $18 per bottle BEFORE MONETIZATION, and with the right CPS traffic source, there’s thousands of orders available per day!!!  Do the math.

2.  I’ve seen as high as 9 partials for every sale.  With good monetization models in place, those 9 partials can turn into at least 3 or 4 orders, which is pretty much pure profit since you’re not paying out a CPS fee on your data.

3.  Unlimited processing from day one.  CPS offers pose very little processing risk, therefore almost any advertiser can get approved for a MID

4.  Less float time.  Free trial campaigns are a challenge because there’s a float time of up to 21 days.  That means that as an advertiser, you essentially become the bank for 21 days to your affiliates, manufacturer, fulfillment house, etc.  And more often than not your MIDs get frozen due to the extreme difficultly you’re faced with when mitigating chargeback exposure.  FORGET ABOUTTT ITTT!!!

If you’re looking to launch a CPS offer, you’re gonna have to create an extremely competitive offer in order to make it work.  You have to convert higher than everyone around you, meaning that there’s a lot of work that has to go under the hood of the offer.   If your tenacious it can be done, and it is definitely worth the wait

Cheers to the rise of the hard sale!!!