Has anybody had experience with setting up their own affiliate offers with a local business? Such as a gym, karate dojo, grocery store, hobby shop, etc. There’s so many benefits to this that pop into mind.
I’d be able to advertise on Facebook and Adwords without likelihood of being banned.
I could negotiate to have the CPA way more than is realistically seen on a network.
I would have hardly any competition. Both in offer and location targeting. Especially in my area, I live on an island that is 6 miles long and 36 miles area. Clicks should be dirt cheap allowing insane ROI. Absolutely nobody will be targeting here. And if they are, I'm sure they could easily be outbid with simple techniques learned here.
I bet if I created and approached as an LLC, I could even get some businesses to give me a marketing budget. Where I could both optimize the campaign on their budget, get paid by CPA conversions, and maybe even take whatever leftovers are in the budget for my services. The offers would probably be coupons, free trials, subscriptions, list building.
So if I target a certain comic shop and they want me to market coupons to get people in their store. I could go on Facebook and first change the location to 15-20 miles around the store, target people who liked that exact shops page, and have included in their interests comics, DC, Marvel, and some FB pages for hardcore fans and collectors of comic books.
Then, Mr. Fan goes on Facebook see's an ad for his favorite comic store "Marvel Giveaway! 20% Coupon Next Visit Only In Dave's Comics, Nowheresville. ONLY X Left!!" Mr. Fan can't believe his luck. "Wow I love comic books, especially Marvel, and I live in Nowheresville and that's even my favorite store! What are the chances I would be so lucky to see this ad before the coupons run out!" He happily signs up.
I could even market this way just by simply posting coupons on Facebook pages for free as if I was a local fan helping the community.
This is all just fantasizing about the future and things always go easier in my head than they actually end up. So any stories, advice or links to a similar thread would be greatly appreciated!
I just recently started doing something similar. I guess the only problem is that it will be.. local.. meaning that it won't be as scalable as the network offers. So in order to make big bucks with this approach you'd need a lot of different offers/clients in your portfolio, which could become hard to manage.
Yes, this is a business model that works. Check out Alex Becker on youtube, he does this with home services companies across the country.
What you probly want to do is pick a vertical to specialize in, get leads coming in before you talk to the business so you understand your costs, then sell the business owners the leads. Expand geographically and sell new biz owners in new areas.
Obviously there are going to be lots of nuances because your dealing with people, expectations, differing quality of leads, etc, but i think you get the idea.