I had a limited understanding of performance marketing until about a year ago. I found it so interesting that it wasn’t before long; I was on Google reading just about every article I could find on the subject. Surprisingly, the majority of results happened to be individuals who proclaim they are performance marketing gurus and that you should pay a hefty fee to attend their conference to learn how to make it BIG. Article after article, individuals were professing they knew all of the answers and that ‘you too can be successful as a performance marketer.’ So…I began to wonder. Why are there are so many of these self-proclaimed gurus…is performance marketing really that easy?

I have come to the conclusion that performance marketing is really what you make of it. By no means do you need to seek out one of those “self-proclaimed Marketing gurus” to get the job done – you can do it on your own; however, either way it requires a lot of work, dedication and the ability to market yourself by networking with other affiliates and/or advertisers.

For example, if you have a blog that attracts high levels of traffic and the demographic is technology focused – you would do well by partnering with an advertiser (ie. Best Buy, Staples, etc.) directly as an affiliate. Most of the time, you will need to submit an application and if approved, you will be provided with a link or a creative that you can email to your blogging community or you can add a snazzy banner to your Blog that flashes and when clicked will drive traffic to the advertisers page. Most advertisers will pay for this click; however, others will only pay for an actual ‘conversion.’ A conversion in this instance is simply the act of having someone purchase an item through the offer link.

For those that don’t get approved directly by the advertiser as one of their affiliates, that is ok. You can partner with another affiliate where if a click/conversion does occur you will receive a share of the profit, also known as a revenue share.

So Here Is My Conclusion:

You can attempt to do your own research online on how to become a performance marketer – and will learn a lot searching for the following keywords in Google “How to become an affiliate marketer?” or by going to eHow.com here. However, the job does not end there. Keep in mind; experience, industry knowledge and mutually beneficial relationships are at the root of success in the performance marketing space. Thus disproving the idea of successful “overnight performance marketers.”

At the end of the day, performance marketing in a nutshell is how well you are able to network with other online marketers and on how you build the relationships and trust with the advertisers.  Once you do, it is important for you to use a tool to help network your programs and analyze how well you are tracking the click to conversion, and your overall marketing investment. This is where CAKE comes in – we provide business intelligence for performance marketers to help you maximize the impact, and optimize the value of your media spend in the global digital advertising market. Contact us so that we can help you increase your revenue, reduce operational costs, and unlock new business opportunities in the performance marketplace.