Aside from the beat to death ideas of using polls and videos for email submits I am putting this here to get some more ideas going on how I've promoted email submits. Specifically this is going to be for publishers looking to make 1K a week but this can work for massive levels of income for the organized affiliates as well.This wont necessarily mean PPC because let's face it, unless you got a real goddamn good knack for what you are doing it can be tough on a starting publisher especially in the testing phase when it usually takes money to throw away just to see if the offer is going to take off or not. There are a ton of other ways (possibly much cheaper) to test email submits WITHOUT using PPC. These can provide more volume than you thought possible once you get the process down it can also give you better ideas on how and who to target should you proceed with a PPC campaign on it in the first place. This process is nothing new, probably been spoke about before but maybe some of the logic of how to approach and implement will help get the creative juices flowin.
Forums And Communities
So forums and community marketing is an excellent way to find targeted traffic to email and even zip submit campaigns. However, if you are a starting affiliate and have no idea what I am talking about then you should really start with putting the offer with a captivating headline in your signature and participate in the forum accordingly. If your past that then this next part is for you.
Picking The Offer, Finding The Community
Personally I would find your offer first. It's easier this way to have an offer in mind and then go hunting the demographics. I remember the Red Bull Email Submit awhile back so I am going to use that as an example. If I were to target the Red Bull Email Submit I would probably go looking for hyped up teenagers or college students. I feel the male demographics would work better in this scenario just because I play Halo 3 on Gamebattles.com. I know that Red bull is an official sponsor of the MLGPro forums for Halo3 Gamers so I have an edge here. You really should have an edge when matching an email submit to a demographic. It does not have to be anything big but there should be something that jumps at you the second you tie your offer to its demographics. This will give you an idea off the bat of where to take the offer.
If you dont have that edge, pick another offer and try again. If you were to pick up a Revlon mascara offer you should know right off the bat that females are going to be interested. Upon knowing this is a female targeted offer the idea of a “cosmetics” forum or something close should jump to mind. With every offer and demographic something like this should trigger in your mind. It takes a bit of practice of your new but it will come to you.
If I was promoting the Red Bull offer I would want to target young dudes. College Forums are my first target. Gaming forums is my second target. College and Gaming blogs/sites are my third target. Already I know that these 3 options are going to provide me more than enough traffic to decide if I will want to continue on with the offer. I want you to spend the least amount of time possible on this. If you were to list every source you knew of then started contacting webmasters on ad rates, then put up your ad, then found out it was a dud, you just wasted a shit load of time.
These 3 sources are more than enough to get you started and make a better decision about committing more time and money.
Alright now that we have some sources we need to look at the options available for advertising right now. Does this forum have a banner anywhere? Does this forum have paid sticky posts? Do the blogs have banners on them? Do they have text links?
You are looking at the most obvious sources of advertising. Most webmasters have adsense as their choice of contextual advertising. Honestly I've been able to get on Adsense pages/sites easier than ones that have no advertising at all. I always use the approach of “You should really split test between advertiser that pay directly and Adsense” and 90%+ of them have always been game to try it out.
Go after the most obvious sources of ads on the sites and test those first. I only say this because doing this will give you an idea of whether you want to try this next part or not. Even if the ad does not perform on site, you should really try this anyway.
Sticky Posts – This is some of the best advertising I've personally ever done with email submits. Basically you just pay the webmaster a flat fee for the month on a sticky (advert). How you write this sticky is of critical importance because if you fuck this up, it's money down the drain. This will take practice but from experience I can tell you that a professional approach works so much better than anything else I have ever done. Example: Rebull in a Halo Forum
We came into the Sticky Post as a sponsor for the next 30 days. We have let everyone know that this is a sponsorship that will only go on for a month so hopefully we have instilled a sense of urgency into them. I've stated some short facts about Red Bull (quoted from wiki) to help them understand what it is. I then pulled some psychology shit on them because I know for a fact that Walshy from Instinct (a top halo3 team) is one of the drink's largest sponsors. I also know for a fact since he played with Final Boss and promoted Red Bull. Since I am in a halo forum advertising these people worship these pro players and are likely to follow suit.
In the last paragraph I have let people know that we can distribute one case per household. Obviously this is to protect the advertiser and yourself. I dont want a fuckload of the same ip's filling out the offer, but I really cannot tell them that can I? I still want to take advantage of whatever I can though so I simply told them to have their friends sign up. I also told them exactly what to expect by entering their email to see if they qualify.
This ad is likely to see a higher than normal conversion rate. I know this from experience (not the ad itself) but in general. I want to express this to you now because if you have already done this type of advertising you may have had questions from your network. In this case I have always been open on how I advertise the offer, but dont let the fucking network trace the referrer data. Yes, even as a network owner I encourage you to hide your traffic sources and I teach my own affiliates how to do this if they dont know how. This business is dirty and at the rates you can literally wipe the house with this type of advertising if they find out, they could possibly just fuck you on the offer and go do it themselves.
This is just one way to use communities and forums to your advantage. Sticky posts are an excellent way to advertise and most of the time the rates are ridiculously cheap. Not only that but the webmaster has to do nothing except create the thread and paste your text and receive their fucking money. You want this dead simple and hassle free for them. It will likely can you even more ads in the future which brings me to the next point.
When approaching these webmasters that own communities you need to come off as a professional. Coming off as an affiliate marketer is not really a good idea (from experience). I can tell you write now that if you already conduct your business on a serious level, they are going to take you seriously. I have met webmasters under the age of 18 in which I had to personally call their parents and explain myself. Do not be afraid of doing this. While it may seem like a hassle to you now, think about the 50,000 people they have registered in their forum that may read the sticky post that you paid $25 for the next 30 days.
Let them know that if this promotion does well for you, you are likely to talk to your superiors about possible future advertisements. One other thing before I end this post, the reason I told you to start off with the most obvious advertising (banners/text links) then moving into a paid sticky post will tie into how to approach the webmaster on this next part of advertising in their community. Now that you have a sticky post up, not everyone will read it likely, so it's time to get directly into their email inboxes and in part two I will explain on how I like to go about doing this.
Forums And Communities
So forums and community marketing is an excellent way to find targeted traffic to email and even zip submit campaigns. However, if you are a starting affiliate and have no idea what I am talking about then you should really start with putting the offer with a captivating headline in your signature and participate in the forum accordingly. If your past that then this next part is for you.
Picking The Offer, Finding The Community
Personally I would find your offer first. It's easier this way to have an offer in mind and then go hunting the demographics. I remember the Red Bull Email Submit awhile back so I am going to use that as an example. If I were to target the Red Bull Email Submit I would probably go looking for hyped up teenagers or college students. I feel the male demographics would work better in this scenario just because I play Halo 3 on Gamebattles.com. I know that Red bull is an official sponsor of the MLGPro forums for Halo3 Gamers so I have an edge here. You really should have an edge when matching an email submit to a demographic. It does not have to be anything big but there should be something that jumps at you the second you tie your offer to its demographics. This will give you an idea off the bat of where to take the offer.
If you dont have that edge, pick another offer and try again. If you were to pick up a Revlon mascara offer you should know right off the bat that females are going to be interested. Upon knowing this is a female targeted offer the idea of a “cosmetics” forum or something close should jump to mind. With every offer and demographic something like this should trigger in your mind. It takes a bit of practice of your new but it will come to you.
If I was promoting the Red Bull offer I would want to target young dudes. College Forums are my first target. Gaming forums is my second target. College and Gaming blogs/sites are my third target. Already I know that these 3 options are going to provide me more than enough traffic to decide if I will want to continue on with the offer. I want you to spend the least amount of time possible on this. If you were to list every source you knew of then started contacting webmasters on ad rates, then put up your ad, then found out it was a dud, you just wasted a shit load of time.
These 3 sources are more than enough to get you started and make a better decision about committing more time and money.
Alright now that we have some sources we need to look at the options available for advertising right now. Does this forum have a banner anywhere? Does this forum have paid sticky posts? Do the blogs have banners on them? Do they have text links?
You are looking at the most obvious sources of advertising. Most webmasters have adsense as their choice of contextual advertising. Honestly I've been able to get on Adsense pages/sites easier than ones that have no advertising at all. I always use the approach of “You should really split test between advertiser that pay directly and Adsense” and 90%+ of them have always been game to try it out.
Go after the most obvious sources of ads on the sites and test those first. I only say this because doing this will give you an idea of whether you want to try this next part or not. Even if the ad does not perform on site, you should really try this anyway.
Sticky Posts – This is some of the best advertising I've personally ever done with email submits. Basically you just pay the webmaster a flat fee for the month on a sticky (advert). How you write this sticky is of critical importance because if you fuck this up, it's money down the drain. This will take practice but from experience I can tell you that a professional approach works so much better than anything else I have ever done. Example: Rebull in a Halo Forum
This is a generic ad that I come up with off the top of my hand so of course there could be some fine tuning but I want to make special notes of how I concealed myself and acted as a sponsor. For anyone that feels this is deceiving, I would like you to tie your dick in a knot and jump off a cliff.
We came into the Sticky Post as a sponsor for the next 30 days. We have let everyone know that this is a sponsorship that will only go on for a month so hopefully we have instilled a sense of urgency into them. I've stated some short facts about Red Bull (quoted from wiki) to help them understand what it is. I then pulled some psychology shit on them because I know for a fact that Walshy from Instinct (a top halo3 team) is one of the drink's largest sponsors. I also know for a fact since he played with Final Boss and promoted Red Bull. Since I am in a halo forum advertising these people worship these pro players and are likely to follow suit.
In the last paragraph I have let people know that we can distribute one case per household. Obviously this is to protect the advertiser and yourself. I dont want a fuckload of the same ip's filling out the offer, but I really cannot tell them that can I? I still want to take advantage of whatever I can though so I simply told them to have their friends sign up. I also told them exactly what to expect by entering their email to see if they qualify.
This ad is likely to see a higher than normal conversion rate. I know this from experience (not the ad itself) but in general. I want to express this to you now because if you have already done this type of advertising you may have had questions from your network. In this case I have always been open on how I advertise the offer, but dont let the fucking network trace the referrer data. Yes, even as a network owner I encourage you to hide your traffic sources and I teach my own affiliates how to do this if they dont know how. This business is dirty and at the rates you can literally wipe the house with this type of advertising if they find out, they could possibly just fuck you on the offer and go do it themselves.
This is just one way to use communities and forums to your advantage. Sticky posts are an excellent way to advertise and most of the time the rates are ridiculously cheap. Not only that but the webmaster has to do nothing except create the thread and paste your text and receive their fucking money. You want this dead simple and hassle free for them. It will likely can you even more ads in the future which brings me to the next point.
When approaching these webmasters that own communities you need to come off as a professional. Coming off as an affiliate marketer is not really a good idea (from experience). I can tell you write now that if you already conduct your business on a serious level, they are going to take you seriously. I have met webmasters under the age of 18 in which I had to personally call their parents and explain myself. Do not be afraid of doing this. While it may seem like a hassle to you now, think about the 50,000 people they have registered in their forum that may read the sticky post that you paid $25 for the next 30 days.
Let them know that if this promotion does well for you, you are likely to talk to your superiors about possible future advertisements. One other thing before I end this post, the reason I told you to start off with the most obvious advertising (banners/text links) then moving into a paid sticky post will tie into how to approach the webmaster on this next part of advertising in their community. Now that you have a sticky post up, not everyone will read it likely, so it's time to get directly into their email inboxes and in part two I will explain on how I like to go about doing this.
