Compared to lasts year’s ASE, there seemed to be fewer exhibits - only two floors instead of three at the NYC Hilton. For those who are attending for the first time, one of the tips I have for you is to make a list of the things you want to accomplish. It could be meeting up with your affiliate manager, making new contacts, finding new networks to work with, whatever.

If you’re meeting up with people, try to arrange it before the event starts as people tend to get busy once the show starts. If you don’t have a plan, you’re bound to waste time just walking the exhibits. Also, make sure to take good notes because you’ll often pick up a lot of good tips just chatting with people.

Overall, the exhibitors at ASE tend to be mostly made up of affiliate networks (e.g. CJ, SAS, Linkshare, Google Affiliate Network) and CPA networks (the usual suspects). If you’re looking for new traffic sources, you’re much better off attending Ad:Tech. However, if you’ve never attended an Affiliate Summit event before, I definitely recommend going to one to make some good contacts.

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Here are a couple of books that I’m currently reading.

Cashvertising

The Ultimate Sales Machine

I downloaded the Kindle app for my Droid so now I can read either on my PC or on my phone.

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Having been frustrated with the Facebook platform, I have been looking at alternative traffic sources. The Plenty of Fish advertising platform has caught my attention recently and I have been running tests on it for the past week or so. I like the variety of targeting options that are available although the reporting interface is a bit clunky.

Anyway, I was just reading Mr. Green’s latest post on it and this line popped out at me:

“Although only around 30% of impressions are served to IAB ads, most people don’t realize that the option is there because they have to deposit $1000 before it’s available.”

I thought that you have to spend rather than just deposit $1000 to get the IAB option. It’s worth a test. I deposited the money to see if the option becomes available and it did.

Here’s some info about the IAB-sized ads. The only sizes currently available are 300×250 (shown on profile pages) and 160×600 (shown on online/your city pages).

So far I have only tested offers in the dating niche, and while there have been conversions, I’m still trying to optimize the CPM to make it profitable for me. Having the IAB size ads will add a whole new dimension to split-testing ads.

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Last night I set up a campaign on Traffic Vance and did not notice that I had a typo in my landing page URL. I woke up this morning and found out that I had maxed out my budget of $25! Fortunately I had set a low budget cap for the initial test. Always, always set a small cap when you first launch your test. That way, if anything goes awry at least you have a safety net. Usually TV will catch “page not found” errors but this occasion shows that it doesn’t always happen. How I found out was that I had actually set up two creatives, one for pop-up and the other for text links. When I logged in, I saw the rejected creative for the text link and decided to check the other one too.

So the moral of the story is… always be sure to test your links before your campaign goes live.

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If you are advertising on CPV or PPV networks, then you may have heard of DirectCPV. I have been testing them for a while now and I have seen good conversions (albeit at a lower volume than some other networks I am using). The lowest CPV you can get is $0.01.  There is also RON traffic which I think has a lower minimum CPV although I haven’t tested that personally, so I’m not sure.

They have an easy to use interface where you can target keywords, URLs or categories.  Generally approvals of new campaigns or targets are done within 24 hours.  If you spend more money wiht them, you can also get a dedicated rep which will then speed up approvals.

One word of caution though. When you add keywords or URL targets, for some reason the system automatically adds category targeting to your campaign. So for example, if you’re adding walmart.com as a URL target, you’ll find that the shopping category is also automatically added. You’ll want to go in there and delete those categories. Otherwise, you’ll get boatloads of traffic with very few conversions. This is a flaw in their system that they still have yet to fix.

I met these guys at AdTech in NY and they are going to be adding more downloadable apps to increase their user base. This is good news for advertisers. If you decide to try out, Direct CPV use this coupon code to get an extra $25 when you deposit $100 into your accout: BR25

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Have you seen the recent redesign of the MaxBounty affiliate’s page?

The new site is easy to navigate and has a nice clean look. For anyone doing CPA marketing, MaxBounty has a ton of offers. If you’re not already part of the network, be sure to take a look.

I met Steve, one of their founders, when I was at AdTech New York last year.  We had a nice chat and I decided to check out his CPA network. All I can say is that I’m glad I did. Great offers, great AM and always pays on time. What else can I say?

If you need an affiliate manager, ask for Adam.

Join MaxBounty here.

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The last day of Affiliate Summit East included another keynote address (which I did not attend) and more breakout sessions.  I only attended one session which was the one on the convergence of MLM and affiliate marketing.  It was presented by Debbi Ballard who is a consultant for the MLM industry and Kevin Grimes who is an attorney specializing in legal matters related to the MLM industry.

It hadn’t occured to me that many CPA networks would be considered an MLM if they had more than one affiliate tier.   So if the network pays you a percentage of the sales generated by another affiliate you recruit through your referral link, that qualifies them as an MLM company.  Kevin also touched upon the issue of FTC compliance and how affliates are considered agents (and not independent contractors) of the CPA network under certain legal statutes.

Besides attending the session, I also visited the exhibit hall again.  If you really want to talk to companies on the exhibit floor, the second day of the exhibits is definitely a better time to visit.  The booths are not as crowded and you won’t have a mob of people surrounding you or the people you are trying to meet.  I was able to talk to a few companies that I totally missed on the second day because of the crowds.

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