Making PPV work in 2012

For the last few years, PPV traffic has been really popular with affiliates. There are some good reasons for that.

1)    There is a lot of traffic to work with

2)    The PPV networks are really open to affiliates. No quality scores, etc. to deal with.

3)    Both direct linking and landing pages work great

4)    It’s a good traffic source to learn paid traffic with.

A lot has changed over the last few years though. Here are a couple of tactics that work great with PPV marketing today.

1. Build an email list

PPV traffic is great for building an email list. The basic idea is to have an opt-in form on your landing page (aweber, etc.) and offer the visitor something in exchange for their email. In the Aff Playbook forum we did a case study offering a free ebook in exchange for an email.

This worked great for two reasons. First, the user gets some value (a reason) from giving up their email. Second, we can actually monetize the ebook by putting affiliate links in it. You can take this one step further by sending them to an offer wall (a landing page with multiple offers) after they opt in. Combining all these strategies gives you multiple chances for a conversion. You could get a conversion after someone submits their email and completes an offer from your offer wall. You could convert from an affiliate link in your ebook, or from the follow up emails you will send. You might even get multiple conversions per opt-in, which makes it easy to see how 1 opt-in could turn into hundreds of dollars in commission.

2. Run CPA Offers

These are the most popular types of offers to run with PPV traffic. Some people don’t find it quite as easy when they can’t use advertorials (like they used to with rebills) but you just have to work smarter. A couple points on how to run CPA offers successfully on PPV traffic.

A)    Always start out with split testing 1 landing page vs direct linking.

Affiliates usually test way too many things at first, which leads to confusion when they try to analyze what’s working. Don’t split test more than 2 things at first, especially if you are on a limited budget. Remember, the more things you split test, the higher your testing budget needs to be.

B)    Always, and I mean always split test your CPA network

This is one of the biggest areas I see that newer affiliates could improve in. They get loyal to one network because it seems like everyone is running offers there, or they aren’t a member of any others. There can be a night and day difference in conversion rates (on the exact same offer) across CPA networks. This is due to a variety of factors like tracking platform, whether the offer is brokered or direct, and the scrub rate. I’ve seen affiliates go from not getting anything to work to profitable just from switching networks.

C)    Try to mimic elements of the offer page on your landing page

Try to make your landing page have the same look and feel as the offer page. You can match colors, button styles, logos, etc. You want to make it seem like one seamless conversion process from your landing page to the offer page. I also want to stress that you should never assume an offer would do better with or without a landing page. Even simple submit offers can do better with a landing page. You never know until you test, which is why I recommend point ‘a’ above.

People are still going to say ‘yeah, but I don’t need to build a landing page for a submit offer’. Let me explain why you should still test it. When a visitor lands on the offer page (direct linking) they are immediately presented with a form to fill out. When you present them a simple landing page, they get an idea what the offer is about and click to see more. Once they have clicked (interacted) on your landing page, you already have them involved in the conversion process and they are much willing to then type in their email. This doesn’t always hold true of course, but it’s definitely worth testing.

PPV is a versatile traffic source. There are many other opportunities in addition to what I’ve presented here. The key is to be creative and figure out how you can best leverage the traffic. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.

 – David Ford – AffPlaybook