PeerFly

PeerFly Weight Loss Contest

peerfly weight loss

This past January we decided to have a weight loss contest at PeerFly. We had a great time early in January at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, but everyone was feeling a bit fat. I had gained back about 30 pounds since graduating college (I lost 40 pounds in 2010) and moving to Florida. Chad, Davey, Travis, Charlie, and I all decided to participate in the first ever PeerFly weight loss contest.

We decided to each put in $100 and since this was going to be a company contest, PeerFly matched our $500 total making a grand prize of $1,000. Whoever lost the most weight by June 18th would win the entire prize. On our first weigh in I was at a hefty 190.2 pounds.

My Weight Loss Strategy

I decided that in order to lose some weight I was going to need some help from an old friend, Weight Watchers. I had already lost 40 pounds using Weight Watchers once, so I knew it was possible. My wife and I signed up and started tracking our Points and weight. We also went and worked out 5-6 days a week. Each night we’d go to the gym our apartment company provides and I would run 1-3 miles on the treadmill and then play basketball for 30 minutes to an hour. Losing weight is 20% exercise and 80% diet from what I have experienced, so it’s very important to keep a strict diet and not overeat. Weight Watchers is a great tool to help keep your food portions under control. If you’re trying to lose weight I highly suggest it.

My Progress

Here is a table with my weight, pounds lost, and percent of total weight lost over the course of our contest.

Date Weight Total Lost Percent Lost
January 31st 190.2 - -
February 10th 179.2 11 lbs 5.78%
April 13th 167.2 23 lbs 12.09%
May 11th 165.8 24.4 lbs 12.82%
June 4th 166 24.2 lbs 12.72%
June 18th 161.6 28.6 lbs 15.03%

You can see over the course of about 5.5 months I lost 28.6 pounds. I am very proud of my weight loss and think I did a great job. My goal weight was 165 pounds and I reached that in May, so I knew it was going to take some work to maintain that weight until the end of the contest. I successfully maintained my weight without any problem and was even able to drop a few extra pounds for the last weight in by fasting.

Fasting

I decided to fast the day before the end of the contest to help myself lose a few extra pounds before the weight in and fasting has been something I have been interested in since reading about Steve Jobs doing it in his biography. I do not think I have ever gone an entire 24 hours without eating any food and thought it’d be interesting to give it a try. So, I had 2 pieces of toast with a cup of coffee at around 10AM on Sunday and didn’t eat anything or drink anything but water until about noon earlier today (about 26 hours fasting). I also went for a 1.3 mile run and played about a half hour of basketball while I was fasting to help my body burn off some stored fat.

Fasting was a cool experience. I wasn’t really hungry at all until after I had eaten lunch. During my fast I felt fine and the only thing that really bothered me was the smell of the food my wife was eating. I am considering fasting every Sunday to cleanse my body, but I want to do some more research on it before I fully dedicate myself.

Contest Winner

Although I was leading for the most part of the contest, Travis was able to pull through at the very end and beat me. Here are the final weight loss percentages:

Travis 15.48%
Luke 15.03%
Chad 7.13%
Charlie 4.38%
Davey 0.4%

Travis beat me by 0.45% and he lost almost 10 pounds the day before the contested ended, so I was in the lead for the majority of the contest. If I had lost an extra pound, I would have won $1,000, but I am not disappointed. I’ve maintained my goal weight for almost two months now and I’m in the best shape I have ever been in. During the weight loss contest I also ran my first 5k (on the treadmill, not in an actual 5k), which I am very proud of.

The contest was a lot of fun, but my goal is to never participate in another weight loss contest again. I should be able to maintain my goal weight (155-165) as long as I continue to eat well and work out on a regular basis. I don’t have an extra $1,000 sitting around, but I definitely got a lot of benefits from the PeerFly weight loss contest and long term I think it’s really going to pay off!

Affiliate Summit Central (ASC12) Wrap Up

affiliate summit central 2012 wrap up

One of the biggest perks to being an Affiliate Manager is attending the affiliate conferences and Affiliate Summit is by far my favorite affiliate marketing conference. Each year there are usually two Affiliate Summit conferences. In January there’s Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas and in September there’s Affiliate Summit East in New York City. This year Shawn Collins, the founder of Affiliate Summit, decided to do another conference in his hometown of Austin, Texas and we decided at PeerFly that we needed to have a presence there so Davey and I flew out on Monday afternoon to see how it would go.

Affiliate Summit Central was small

The last Affiliate Summit, ASW12 in January, had over 5,000 attendees. Affiliate Summit Central I believe had about 400-500 people attending. It was about 10% the size of a normal Affiliate Summit. When I was walking around talking to people that I had met at previous Affiliate Summit conferences, it seemed like everyone said the same thing. It was “weird” for an Affiliate Summit to be so small. There was no large exhibit hall, but instead just some tables setup around a multipurpose room. I say multipurpose because it was the room they served breakfast/lunch in and also the room that everyone would hang out in between sessions. It definitely felt weird, but it was also pretty functional.

affiliate summit central 550x412 Affiliate Summit Central (ASC12) Wrap Up
Image from Shawn Collin’s Facebook

ASC sessions Affiliate Summit Central (ASC12) Wrap Up

The sessions were okay

We were not really sure what to expect as far as a turnout for Affiliate Summit Central so PeerFly decided not to exhibit. We have exhibited at the past three Affiliate Summit conferences, but for this one we decided to just get passes so we could network and go to the sessions. I don’t think I’ve gone to a session at Affiliate Summit since ASE10, but it was nice to be able to participate in the sessions at ASC. Some of the sessions were lame and didn’t have a lot of great content (or at least I wasn’t interested in the content), but there were a few that I really enjoyed. One that had a ton of value in my opinion was the Search Engine Optimization Q&A. There were three SEO experts who were basically taking questions from the audience. Now, because we are internet nerds and socially awkward, they had a system setup so you could text in your questions rather than having to ask in front of a room full of around 100 people. Nearly all the questions they took were from the text messages coming in (including two of my own. haha!) and it was a very interesting discussion.

IMG 0565 550x412 Affiliate Summit Central (ASC12) Wrap Up

The parties were great

Having graduated college about a year ago, I’ve attended a party or two. There is nothing that opens people up more than getting a little bit of alcohol in their system. That includes me. So, needless to say, I throughly enjoy the parties held at the different Affiliate Summit conferences. Even though Affiliate Summit Central was a lot smaller than the normal Affiliate Summit, there was no lack in the party experience. The parties were absolutely great and I had an awesome time hanging out and mingling with publishers, clients, and random people I don’t remember. Thankfully, I never forget to get a business card :)

I want to give a special shout out to Logan Thompson and Ian Fernando. The only thing that makes an open bar better is an open bar with great company.

ASC13?

One of the things Davey and I discussed on our flight back home was whether or not ASC12 was worth the money and if we should attend it again next year (if there is one). The decision…yes. Although the conference was a lot smaller than normal, there were many great contacts to be made and even without the contacts, just having a presence can be worth it. There were a lot of people there that we are already working with at PeerFly and meeting up with those people was great. Building a person relationship helps build trust and sometimes that’s all it takes to get the traffic or offer.

I am looking forward to Affiliate Summit East in August. If you’re a serious affiliate marketer I suggest you start saving now for airfare and a pass. If you have any questions or want to discuss conferences more feel free to contact me. Now, time to get back to work and make some money!

Add your tracking pixel to a PeerFly offer

tracking pixel featured

It is important as an affiliate marketer to be able to collect as much data as possible from your traffic in order to optimize your affiliate marketing campaign. I recently discussed how to optimize your 7Search campaign. Most seasoned affiliate marketers will do this using a 3rd party tracking system. It’s not always required, but it’s usually a good idea.

For example, at PeerFly we provide you with quite a bit of information about your traffic on your PeerFly Reports page. You can see how many clicks you got (unique and total), how many conversions you got, your EPC, and your conversion rate. You can even break those statistics down by subid and have the option to export your click statistics into a CSV file. However, there would still be benefits to using a 3rd party tracking system. For example, with Prosper202 you can easily track your campaigns ROI (something I’ve always found useful). In order to do this you will need to be able to track your conversions on your 3rd party tracking software.

There are a few ways to track your conversions using PeerFly and a 3rd party tracking system, but the method that most people use and the one that seems to work best is by placing a tracking pixel on the offer on PeerFly. Luckily, PeerFly has made it very simple for you to do this!

Add your pixel to the advertiser’s conversion page

If you have picked out an offer you want to run and have your pixel ready to go simply go to the offer page on PeerFly. Once there, scroll down to the red Tools tab. Click that.

step1 setup pixel 550x234 Add your tracking pixel to a PeerFly offer

The Tools menu should be showing. Click the Place Tracking Pixel link.

Now, you should be at the page where you can actually place your tracking pixel. Simply copy and paste your pixel into the box. If you have more than once pixel you can use them both, simply put a space between each one.

place tracking pixel 550x208 Add your tracking pixel to a PeerFly offer

Once you push submit your pixel will be automatically added to the offer page so whenever you get a conversion we will notify your 3rd party tracking  software.

If you have any trouble placing your pixel or would like me to check to make sure it has been added properly just let me know. Also, if you’d like me to do a test lead to make sure everything is setup properly that is fine (do not do a test lead yourself). Let’s make some money!