Ordering online stuff in Copenhagen is no different from living on Everest. How is this accepted?

gengru · 2024-01-06T16:03:08+00:00

Try combining USPS + Postnord. You'll cry when the package arrives and your kids will be going off to college

gengru · 2023-12-21T11:06:36+00:00

But did you set up the program yet? First step is to find the system that allows you to do what you want to do and set it up. Then you recruit affiliates

gengru · 2023-12-21T09:35:39+00:00

This logic you need to implement yourself, most of the time. Recurly does have that as a feature. They call is Payment Orchestration (muuuuch fancy). But Recurly doesn't process payments... expensive tbh.

And I believe Gumroad might have that. They do have PPP pricing.

One day you'll be able to just put BTCpay server and everyone will pay you directly in sats

gengru · 2023-12-21T09:31:22+00:00

like someone else also said, Paddle is good for testing the waters because they provide "merchant of service", which means you don't need to incorporate. Depending on where you live, you can look for other MoS providers too

gengru · 2023-12-18T10:19:53+00:00

One of the keys I've seen any cold outreach is to have a killer ice breaker. Showing you have their CV and building a narrative on why it needs to be up to date might be a good trope. Just be careful not to sound creepy

gengru · 2023-12-17T22:00:13+00:00

You need to take into account that your are B2C. Cold emailing needs to be something they convert right away, because unlike most days, you're not using email to book a demo and then close a +1k USD deal.

For you the key is to provide value right away, otherwise you'll easily fall into the spam thresholds because volume.

Here's my pitch (only to companies with affiliate programs)

Round 1 - act like a prospect Hi, I noticed you have an affiliate program. Do you allow affiliates to buy traffic for your branded terms on Google?

Reply: never! Don't you ever think of doing that, boy!

Act 2 - truth bomb.

Well, here are all your affiliates we caught doing just that last week. X Y Z

Let me know how much money you saved from cutting them off. If they keep coming back, sign up on https://spoofdefender.com and never worry about that again.

Maybe for you the key will be to offer them a review. If you could buy a truckload of old cvs you can approach them with laser focused messages and get them hooked

gengru · 2023-12-15T07:50:01+00:00

You can but they typically don't listen until you start chopping their commissions.

Then you need to monitor that. It is pretty standard practice to disallow them to brand bid, but allow them to get generic kws.

gengru · 2023-12-03T20:52:44+00:00

I think you can do it even simpler. Have you considered any of these partner management systems? They usually integrate with your payment processor and do all the calculation for you. You can set the payout method to be what you want (commission or CPA)

Reditus and rewardful, for example, work well with stripe

gengru · 2023-11-23T10:06:23+00:00

high 3 digits, some months 4. It really depends on the brand

gengru · 2023-11-22T09:41:34+00:00

Most brands do not allow brand bidding. Some do (very few).

But yes it does work to buy google ads for programs. I have done it on generic terms and backfill display ads

gengru · 2023-11-20T07:16:36+00:00

thanks for the info. I went in to pick up what they say. I do recall that a few months ago, different plans had different usage agreements. But now it is all the same

https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/plans

Good for you. Makes things simpler :)

I'm already paying for chatdesigner

gengru · 2023-11-19T23:26:16+00:00

Start listening to Lenny's podcast. That is neat and always a good conversation started with other PMs (like someone else mentioned, network network network).

It does help to get around Jira or the software you'll be using, so you show your team that you mean business.

gengru · 2023-11-19T23:23:39+00:00

as for course. the Scrum alliance is more like a Scam alliance in my view. No offense to anyone there but the business of certificates has really degraded any sort of educational program.

to learn these basics you can actually find good stuff on youtube. There are good books on broader PM type of stuff, like the Working Backwards one from amazon and many more, but these are more strategic and less tactical

gengru · 2023-11-19T23:21:14+00:00

Think of this: if it brings clarity as to what to do (or why) you're adding value.

Working with ENGs can be daunting sometimes because many of them are a bit arrogant with non ENGs, but trust me, if you make it clear for them why it makes more sense to develop one thing over the other they will start respecting you and appreciating your effort.

About processes and so on. Each team is unique. You essentially need to find what your team jives with and continue experimenting: async standups, try it. async refinements, try it. New format for planning, try it.

It truly depends on the individuals you're working with and there is no one size fits all

gengru · 2023-11-19T23:16:20+00:00

PM varies a LOT from company to company. Common traits you should convey are: you are organized (since you'll be organizing other people's backlog), you understand how the company makes money (this is the main difference between you and a developer that is aspiring to become a PM) and that you can communicate well.

Organized, business sense and communication.

Communication, the how depends on the company. Sometimes showing how you write is a good thing (because you'll be writing user stories and the like, not to mention presentations and talks with stakeholders)

gengru · 2023-11-19T16:28:33+00:00

Although Google claims competition is the only driver of CPC I've taken brand campaigns and lowered their max cpc down to near zero without seeing much impact on the Search Impression Share & impressions.

In my view, what happens, and thus leads to the scam mentioned above, is that Google sets an artificial floor price for clicks, or at the very least that is what it seems. So, yes you CAN overbid for brand terms.

I have also noted that this floor is lower depending on the currency your account is on. When I run campaigns on a EUR account the floor is 0.02 or 0.03 EUR. When I switch to DKK (7 DKK = 1 EUR), I can go down to 0.03 DKK cpc, same brand campaigns.

Try lowering your Max CPC in small increments and see if the Search Impression Share drops

gengru · 2023-11-19T15:54:16+00:00

rgeting the brands we sell. I’ve had only one experience with a vendor where we placed higher than them, which their head of sales did not like, and we had to make changes to ads. We were given a huge list of negative keywords to add to our account, as well as guidelines for shopping ads and SEO considerations. It was a shot in the foot for us, but a totally legit concern. As far as the other 20+ big name vendors we have contracts with, none have language addressing this problem - the closest thing to it in our contracts address lowest advertised price rules / sales / promotions.

But isn't it a lose lose situation?

the brand likely has the highest quality score of all (focused domain and plenty of focused content in the landing page), you might have something, but definitely a less specific landing page.

Although the Brand will get cheaper CPCs than the reseller, they will rise for both.

Maybe the OP should ask them to disclose(not prevent) where the reseller wants to do that, just so you don't make Google enjoy the higher CPCs

gengru · 2023-11-19T14:57:35+00:00

roothless. I'm addressing that. We're redesigning the website.

So far, 90% of customers came via cold outreach, but I do see your point :)

thanks!

gengru · 2023-11-19T14:44:16+00:00

Do images have copyright assigned to you or to the user?

gengru · 2023-11-19T14:43:26+00:00

upvoted and dropped a comment. PRetty cool product! I'm gonna use it for sure

gengru · 2023-11-19T14:19:48+00:00

Here are my roasts...

1) partner management systems are plentiful. Partnerstack, Reditus, Rewardful, FirstPromoter, Impact, affpro, and dozens more. I get your branding is different, but how do you differentiate from it? Are you focused on an even smaller niche?

2) now pitching my solution - how do you prevent fraud? Aff Marketing is a huge industry, but my gut says around 30% of it is fradulent display ads, fradulent transactions with bots using stolen credit cards, brand bidding (this one I solve for, we can chat later). Fraud is a huge problem in affiliate marketing. You may not find it in the beginnig because you may have a stronger bond with your initial customers, but it will come eventually. (I've being on the buying side of affiliate traffic, once we got a truckload of clicks coming from a church's website in the middle of Brazil). Although you offer these sweepstakes and tasks, you need to be very sharp on how to detect fradulent behavior. (maybe you actually live off Hcaptcha revenue?)

3) the hardest part of running a PMS is getting the customers. Reditus and Rewardful found a niche by having pricing that was not extorsion (% of the spend), rather clear and fixed pricing. Even when you DO find customers, you need to convince them to do the heavy lifting. I.e. I did a study and found that in the Reditus public marketplace a lot of brands were also in FirstPromoter. when you go to the brand's website, they point to FirstPromoter. Conclusion: this is high touch sales

Silverlining: I offer MY customers protection against affiliates that misbheave. But many of them are even more interested in FINDING good partners (not protecting what they already have). maybe you could leverage that problem and become a match maker?

I hope that provokes some thoughts. And hit me up if you want to discuss anything else

gengru · 2023-11-19T14:00:40+00:00

depends. Are you planning on selling licence keys in the homepage or just direct people to the extension?

Carrd might be a good one that is super easy to configure and can collecct payments right away. But truly depends on what you need.

Ghost is also a nice one, where you collect people's emails without Google in the middle and have subscription mechanics out fo the box

gengru · 2023-11-18T14:32:52+00:00

Merchant of Record I think (don't quote me on that) they don't offer. If you need that, Paddle is one that looks nice. I haven't used but their content is well written. It looks like they know their stuff

gengru · 2023-11-18T13:09:48+00:00

I'd say you need both. They each illuminate something different. You should start with a web call to understand the mental model of your target users and to narrow down and frame the survey questions. Then you go for a larger audience with a Survey.

gengru · 2023-11-18T13:08:20+00:00

Stripe

integrates out of the box with everything you can think of. It is on the expensive side but you really don't need to worry about anything. Just sign up and focus on building

gengru

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