Online tracking is starting to radically change the way we do business, and the way we operate as a society. It has taken marketing from circulation figures and Nielsen ratings to CTRs and CPAs. It has organized our relationships, interests and activities into social networks. The time we spend on the internet, and soon in the real world through GPS and internet connected phones, is all trackable, and thus, monetizeable.

In the future, we will all become micro-affiliates.

We are beginning to openly allow our activities to be tracked and monitored. For now, I am not referring to “big brother” style government monitoring, but activities we allow to be public, such as our interests, where we get our information, where we spend our money, and who we know. This information is obviously very valuable to marketing companies. Currently, advertisers are able to target our activities through contextual advertising, but it should seem obvious that contextual only begins to scratch the surface of effective marketing.

In the future, we will demand that the marketing we see is targeted to us.

If you are working online, you know your time is becoming very valuable. We are already using RSS feeds and subscriptions to filter out the information we need each day, and using social networks to keep up with our friends activities and interests. We use product reviews and comparisons to decide what we should be buying, and read specialized blogs to find out about new products on the market. Current contextual advertisements work like magazine ads, anticipating our interests based on what we are reading, however there is potential for advertisements to be much more cerebral.

Facebook attempted this with Social Ads (even applications took Facebook data into ads outside of Facebook), however they received a massive amount of backlash for showing personal product recommendations from friends without their consent. Most people were upset about this because of their privacy, however I think they should reconsider. Social ads are a great concept, as long as the people they use are being compensated with affiliate commissions.

In the future, we will help companies recommend products

When you connect our personal interests, with what we purchase and how we rate those purchases, you get information that is not only valuable to marketing companies, but valuable to other people. We are all accustomed to looking up product reviews before we purchase a product, but even those are often hard to find and hard to trust. When I purchase a product, it would be invaluable to be able to see reviews from people with similar shopping habits and interests to myself. In addition, it would be even more valuable to be able to connect with that person, and to chat with them about that product before I bought it.

In the future, we will want to help others purchase the products we recommend

The only way that we would want to give this valuable information about ourselves away, is if we are paid to, as affiliates would be. Companies should be more than happy to share revenue in order to market more efficiently. We should be able to earn micro-affiliate commissions through our shopping habits. We should be able to increase those commissions by offering product reviews. We should be able to increase our commissions further by actually making ourselves available to answer questions about products we buy.

The future is soon, so who’s doing this?

The next generation of cell phones will allow us to use GPS, the internet, and RFID to combine real-world activities with online research and tracking. The infrastructure will be there to allow online marketing techniques to follow us out into the real world - when we want it to. A company like Google, who is already a specialist in contextual marketing, could be the company to turn us all into micro-affiliates. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It makes good business sense that one day, they should organize our consumer habit information, and make it accessible to others - for a commission, please.

I signed up at RocketProfit a few weeks ago, and was immediately impressed by their selection of campaigns, especially in exclusive campaigns, so I’ve been excited to give them a try. In the few months since I really got into CPC, I’ve done most of my advertising with NeverblueAds campaigns, but since some of my favorite campaigns were recently disabled, it’s been a good time to try something new.

It was good timing to see John Chow’s new contest for an Elite Retreat pass, because he’s challenged us to come up with a marketing strategy using campaigns from RocketProfit - something I was already doing. Elite Retreat sounds like a dream come true event for everyone involved - like a Dragon’s Den for online entrepreneurs to bring their business plans together, learn from some really talented and experienced mentors, and to benefit from their expertise to strengthen your business plan.

There are so many possibilities with the RocketProfit campaigns right now, I really don’t know where to start. While there are a lot of campaigns that can simply be pushed through CPC on search and Facebook, I’d like to come up with something where I’m not at risk of competition driving my keyword prices up too much. I’d also like a campaign where I simultaneously build a list of my own, so I can re-use it in the future.

What I came up with is simple, and effective. The one flaw is that there is already competition in the market, but I’ve come up with a contest that would hopefully help me to promote the application.

Grower Flowers Campaign

My campaign involves creating a Facebook (and Bebo) application to send virtual flowers for Valentines Day. Once the application is installed, it allows you to send virtual flowers to any person on your contact list, along with a message.

The application will advertise Grower Flowers in the application window, as well as recommending to the sender that they can follow up with real flowers after they send the virtual ones, with another link to Growers Flowers. As with any Facebook application, the transaction will be featured in both the sender and recipient’s news feeds, and on the recipient’s profile page. A text ad will appear beneath the gift, allowing the recipient to send back a virtual flower, or send real flowers using Grower Flowers.

In order to encourage people to install the application, I would give away 1 real flower gift through Grower Flowers per day randomly to 1 person who sent virtual flowers, and list those winners in the application. The free flowers will be valued at $39.95 USD

To advertise, I would place ad variations with Facebook Social Ads. I would promote that you can send virtual flowers for free, with a chance to win a free real bouquet from Grower Flowers. I would also promote the app through Facebook App advertising platforms like SocialMedia and Cubics.

As a bonus, I would collect information about the people who install my Facebook application. I can use the birthday information to promote sending flowers on birthdays, and I can market the application seasonally.  There is also the opportunity to sell the application as it grows larger.

I think that done right it could be a successful, long term campaign that could cycle many different online flower retailer affiliate programs.

Rough projections here..

Growers pays $14 per sale. I would expect to pay an average of $0.35-$0.60 CPC on Social Ads and $0.10-$0.20 on apps. I would expect to get more installs through app advertising, but higher quality leads through the Social Ads. With a $500 advertising budget per day, I’d hope to see 1500+ clicks and 500+ installs (rough numbers) daily, escalating as the app grows virally. That means I’d have to sell 40 flowers per day to break even, but I may be able to cut back on my ad spend as the app grows as long as I keep meeting my 500 daily installs. That is 3500 people by Valentines day, sending a minimum of 3500 virtual flowers. At minimum, I’d have to convert 250 of those to a sale to break even on a $500 daily ad spend (or 7%). The success would really depend on how viral the app went, and how many installs I could get over 3500 to decrease my required conversion ratio.

I hope that this idea shows some of my thought process - my approach to marketing is to try and create an application of value rather than to just dump campaigns into search and hope my margins work. I’m currently working on some big ideas that I’d love to bring to Elite Retreat - especially since I’m quitting my day job to pursue them next month.

As a follow-up to my first article about WidgetBucks, I can now report on my first month’s earnings. I placed WidgetBucks in the spots where I had previously been running AuctionAds, and was immediately impressed with the results. My total for October was $79.79, which did well compared to the last few months with AuctionAds, although could not compete with the $25 bonuses I received when people signed up with eBay.

The total seems to have been adjusted and debited, and what was alarming was that I received an email from WidgetBucks claiming that they had detected click fraud and a violation of their TOS on my sites. I ran these ads in a game window where the CTR is typically low, and only saw an average of 0.04% CTR on the 522,875 impressions I sent over. There is no way there was click fraud with such a low CTR to start with, so I will have to monitor this closely and ensure I receive my payment in 45 days when they process payouts. While I am happy that they stay on top of click fraud, I was very disturbed by the email as it did not include any evidence, simply an excerpt of their TOS.

October was a record month for me overall, and I’m looking forward to trying some new things in November. I’m already seeing an increase in Adsense and WidgetBucks earnings this month, and I’m hoping to spend more time tweaking my NeverBlue campaigns to see why they are performing so poorly.

This blog has recently become a mish-mash of my exploits in making money online, and my personal interests of cooking, music reviews and writing.  This post will attempt to unify the two.

On the affiliate marketing and web start-up side of life, I’ve had a very successful October, with Poker Underworld, Kill The Zombies! and Toronto Maple Leafs Info all having good months, with Santa’s Arcade and my new startup, Keyword Envy ready to launch in November.

I’d love to start attending affiliate conferences to meet other like-minded online marketers who are launching their own startups, and to network and find out the best possible ways for me to promote my products.  It’s also a good way to figure out what everyone else is doing so I can avoid it and try to stay a step ahead!

Zac Johnson is promoting his contest to give a free pass to a lucky ready of his great affiliate marketing blog.  He recently posted some tips for CPC marketing which were very interesting to read.  I’m testing some campaigns using his suggestions right now and while I’m still waiting to break even, I have certainly learned some good techniques that I had not considered.

On a personal level, I had a great time at the yearly Martyn-Bessette Halloween party in Beeton and it was one of the best ever.  I finally had a chance to try out my Burger King alter-ego and everyone really outdid themselves with the costumes this year, especially Wes who not only fell off of his front porch in his 15lb (each) wooden robot shoes, but also fell face first into his front bushes.  I also had a fantastic birthday last week and was able to toast 30+ people with drambuie at midnight which might be a record so far.

Jasmin has recently started a new job, and today I set an exit strategy in motion to leave my daytime job after 6+ years maintaining online bingo networks.  It’s sad to go, but there are so many things I’d like to do online, and so much knowledge I’d like to pass on in the future working as an Interactive Director or similar position that I’ve been finding it hard to stay motivated at work.  I’m looking to find something new, or start going back to school, by Feb 1st.

Recently I removed AuctionAds from most sites on my network. After reporting problems, poor earnings and a complete lack of trust I’d had enough. Recently, beta access to their new ShoppingAds service has been passed around, and I have to wonder why I should give them a try?

Compared to WidgetBucks, their product is horrible. WidgetBucks manages to squeeze comparative shopping and attractive ads and product photos into their tiny ad units, while AuctionAds somehow looks worse then Adsense units used to. They are poorly aligned and hard to read.

The ShoppingAds service is a complete whitelabel of AuctionAds which sends shivers down my spine and does nothing to initiate trust in a new service. ShoppingAds brings nothing new to the table, and my traffic is too valuable to risk the many issues which plagued AuctionAds without acknowledgement or apology. And with the same company behind it, I’m sure I can expect the same slow and inculpable customer service I’m used to.

Until I read about some other affiliate’s amazing results, I’ll stick with my WidgetBucks which are currently out-performing Adsense. The most I’m willing to do is give a referral link to them.

Earlier this month, I gave WidgetBucks a try as a replacement for the failing AuctionAds (notice I’m not linking to them…) units I’d been running on Poker Underworld. While AuctionAds started out nicely, my earnings declined every month despite increasing traffic and I am convinced they simply lost everyone’s clicks and sales. It was very disappointing because ads that allowed Poker players to shop on eBay while they played did very well, and the customers enjoyed it.

So far, so good with WidgetBucks. In my first 10 days I’ve put through just over 125,000 impressions and seen around a $0.14 ECPM and $0.29 CPC which is nearly triple what Adsense typically pays - pretty good considering that the Poker impressions always show a low CTR and CPM. While $17 in 10 days doesn’t come close to how AuctionAds started out, it’s much better then it ended off and a nice complement to the other ad units on the site.