How to become an advertiser...?

[cyberworkspace]

for some project of mine, i am considering to start a programme to be promoted by affiliates. now, i have done some affiliate marketing, but never ever dealt with setting up my own programme.

so, there are a couple of questions regarding this from my side and i am thankful for any advide you can give me.

a) the campaign should promote signing up for a social community on a financial website. initially targeted userbase is something like 2.500 to 5.000 users. is this considered an affiliate campaign at all or is this by any means to small?

b) i expect to pay 0.75 to 1.25 per sign-up (as the site has no membership fees but just the community to sign up for). sounds ok?

c) what would be the required tracking system usually look like? to integrate some piece of tracking software coming from the affiliate company or to develop some piece of software on my own?

d) what kind of fraud protection has to be implemented from side of the affiliate company, so that it would be ensured that i only get quality users. i don't want to waste 5k the first day without having a single legit user (but half pakistan, india and malaysia) signing up on my site?

thanks a lot for giving any hints or pointing me to some blog or other source of information.

 

[killafawk]

depending on where you wanna be an advertiser at. it can cost as much as 20,000$ just to get listed on the site and setup with them. So your better off doing it yourself on a smaller scale.

Which is a pain.

 

[johu]

You're going to get inundated with fraud. You might want to only actually accept valid leads as those from the US, or go to a CPA network and have them only push the offer to top publishers in your specific niche. Start asking around the CPA networks, and you'll find all the answers to your questions.

 

[aim]

Setup some pre-qualification methods on your end which verifies things like U.S. Addresses and phone numbers. There are a number of services out there that do this for a fee. One thing you could try to do is take a valid credit card number but NEVER charge their account; basically take it as a way to prove that the signup is valid and over 18.

 

[MaxSteve]

Hi Cyberspace,

Based on the information you've give in your post, I have to say I don't believe you are ready for an affiliate program yet. The biggest reason I say that is because the rate you thought might be appropriate ($0.75 - $1.25). Consider you are looking for a social network signup, which would most likely involve a full profile creation, and considering the social network is very targetted, you are in fact going to need to spend $4.00+ for your leads. Multiply that by the 5000 leads you are looking for and your first foray into affiliate marketing could be a very expensive one.

In addition, considering you still aren't sure of the tracking, reporting, fraud control, etc. I think you have a lot more to worry about that the rate or finding a network who'll run the campaign. I'd suggest you go through the following steps (if you haven't done so already):

1- Design your site so you can collect stats on just about everything. How many incomplete signups, how many complete signups with invalid (i.e. out of country) data, how many valid signups before e-mail confirming, how many valid signups complete e-mail confirm, how the members travel through your site, etc.

2- Do some research to figure out how you will define/detect a valid/invalid member. This includes, but is not limited to, IP checks, e-mail confirmation, address verification, phone verification, etc.

3- Figure out how you will monetize your members. Will you use coregs, mailing list blasts, banners, suggested product sales, etc.

4- Implement what you discovered in steps 1, 2 and 3 above.

5- Find a company that can send out a targetted e-mail drop for your site on a CPM basis. You have to be careful here to find a reputable mailer. You don't want spammers, or someone who runs crappy lists. It is absolutely critical that you get a quality e-mail drop. The reason you want a CPM mail drop is you can control your costs and you know all of your traffic will be targetted. You will not get that from an affiliate network.

6- Once the e-mail drop is complete, let a week or two go by then measure how much money you've made using the stats you defined in step 1.

7- Step 6 should allow you to figure out how much you can afford to pay per lead, and figure out what you would consider a valid payable lead.

8- If Step 7 comes in too low, revisit your site design to see what you can do to better monetize your members. This may require you to test with another e-mail drop. You might need to repeat steps 7 and 8 more than once.

9- Once you've at a point where you can pay a decent rate for a lead, approach an affiliate or CPA network to get your campaign setup.

It sounds like all of the above is a big hassle, but it is critical to ensure you run a site that makes money. All too many sites get launched with no idea what to pay per lead, and no idea how to make money. They wind up spending a crapload of cash with no return and are left scratching their heads when the creditors come knocking on their door forcing them into bankruptcy.

 

[cyberworkspace]

big thanks to all of you guys, that is exactly what i was hoping for.

yeah, no doubt i am not ready to start a campaign by now at all, but don't worry as this is planned for some time in the future.

thanks to your input i am now on much safer ground regarding the requirements and the process (and technologies) that i need to lay out beforehand.

thanks again.

 

[WeBcYtE]

a) the campaign should promote signing up for a social community on a financial website. initially targeted userbase is something like 2.500 to 5.000 users. is this considered an affiliate campaign at all or is this by any means to small?

You may want to think about using a viral marketing tactic...if your site is worthwhile, people will WANT to join and you won't need to pay for it. Try getting it popular in a third world country and then bring it over here when you have like 200K filipinos signed up on it. That's worked for Youtube, Friendster and a few others.

b) i expect to pay 0.75 to 1.25 per sign-up (as the site has no membership fees but just the community to sign up for). sounds ok?

If you insist on paying, keep in mind that your actual commissions will be 50% of the total you are paying to the CPA network. That's more like $1.50 to $2.50 per lead, which is expensive if you aren't making money.

c) what would be the required tracking system usually look like? to integrate some piece of tracking software coming from the affiliate company or to develop some piece of software on my own?

Google Analytics...free with your AdWords account.

d) what kind of fraud protection has to be implemented from side of the affiliate company, so that it would be ensured that i only get quality users. i don't want to waste 5k the first day without having a single legit user (but half pakistan, india and malaysia) signing up on my site?

You would actually benefit from having 3rd world members on a social site, because they still generate lots of ad impressions that you can monetize with something like AdBrite or AdEngage.

thanks a lot for giving any hints or pointing me to some blog or other source of information.

Yeah, check out this thing called the Internet. I hear it's full of information and porn.