…Following on from my pearls of wisdom, one thing you should definitely do is always make sure that you’ve inserted the affiliate links on your webpages. I’ve just checked my stats for a new program I was promoting, for which I was a getting a decent amount of natural traffic from google, only to find the reason it wasn’t converting was because I had failed to put the affiliate links on the page. BOLLOCKS!
I’ve just read this post from the ‘Evolutionary Imarketing Success’ Blog, and although it brings up some good points about both paid and unpaid or natural site traffic, I think the general message they are trying to get across that paid traffic is always superior is misleading. In my opinion, it depends on the type of site you’re running and that kind of sweeping generalisation cannot be made across the board.
If you are running a site that basically consists of just a landing page with some text and a link to the merchant then yes, paid traffic is probably the way to go as you’re unlikely to get ranked highly in the SE’s and finding sites to link to yours will be tough. However, if you have a content rich site which can get tons of inbound links due to it’s unique content, the SE’s will probably rank it well and it’ll get decent traffic for free. Ok, so this are two very general and simplistic examples and obviously both paid and natural traffic can go hand in hand for a lot of sites, but you get the jist. Essentially it depends on the type of site, but to say that paid traffic (although it may produce quicker results), will always be the most effective is wrong.
I’m setting up my latest site in the hope that I won’t have to pay anything for traffic, but I’ll have to wait and see if that’s going to be viable or not and how well I rank naturally in the SE’s. To be honest if I have to I don’t have a problem with paying for traffic so long as the end result is profitable, but I know it isn’t the be all and end all. But then again, what do I know? I’ve only been in this game for a few months…
I found this site on my web wanderings yesterday; it’s a social networking site/blog directory. It currently only hosts affiliate marketing blogs, but I assume more ‘communities’ will be added soon. Basically, you add your blog and your posts are automatically submitted to the community. Members can then bump any posts of interest, so it’s essentially a Digg for (at the moment) affiliate marketing blogs (which is probably a good thing as some Digg chumps users seem to have developed a resentment towards this type of blog recently).
I think this is great. I love reading about other people’s experiences with affiliate marketing, but there are so many SEO guides and advice type blogs that it can sometimes be a mission to find the genuine, personal blogs. I know there are people who are looking for guides etc and sure, they do have some good tips and advice, but there’s just too many off ‘em!
For example, I registered my blog at Blog Top Sites but if you look in the Internet Marketing and SEO section virtually all the blogs are ‘a guide to this’ and ‘tips on that’. Enough already!! I dunno about everyone else, but I much prefer to read business or affiliate marketing blogs that have a personal perspective.
Anyway, I digress. Basically, I really like bumpzee.com and they’ve already sent me a decent amount of traffic even though I only registered yesterday. I suppose the best thing about it is that your blog posts will definitely get seen (if not read) by people browsing the site as they are automatically submitted. And if you write really interesting posts then you should get a fair few visitors to your blog, so make sure you submit your blog asap.
By the way, I got to the last sentence of this post before accidentally pressing ‘back’ which erased the whole thing. There’s now a wall shaped dent in my fist…teach me not to ’save and continue editing’…
As I was browsing the A4U Forum today I noticed a ton of questions from people new to affiliate marketing, something which I’ve noticed more and more since the new year (hell, I only got into this a few months ago) and I can’t help wondering what’s going to happen in a couple of years. As more and more people turn to the internet for their dollar (not specifically affiliate marketing), it’s getting a lot more competitive and there are fewer niches to explore. How long is this going to work for? Is there always going to be money for people to make; are there enough new areas and niches popping up to meet the ‘demand’?
Obviously people who have established themselves as ’super affiliates’ etc will probably be fine but what about everyone else? A general rule with internet marketing is that 20% of affiliates produce 80% of the total revenue for a given program or whatever so it’s more than likely that people (the other 80%) will start to get squeezed out eventually, as they begin to find they can no longer compete.
I guess the key is to adapt and diversify if you want to succeed - The days of a simple shopping directory or comparison site are definietly long gone! It will certainly be interesting to see how the landscape of this industry looks in the next couple of years…
After reading a thread over on the A4U Forum, I thought it would be good to post about what you should be thinking about if you’re looking to create your first affiliate site. I’ve noticed a ton of threads that have started since the new year about people looking to get into the industry and how they should go about.
Firstly, it’s important to pick an area that interests you, ideally in a niche without too much competition. I completely didn’t follow this rule when I started out and found it harder to keep motivated and update my site than if it had been an area I was really enthusiastic about. If you don’t enjoy what you do, it’s much harder to work productively and create quality content for your site. Whatever you do, don’t try and start a shopping directory site - it’s been done to death and there is virtually no chance of you making any money.
Research! Find out who your competition is, see if there’s room for you in the market. You may have chosen an area that’s highly saturated, in which case it’s probably best to look somewhere else unless you’re a complete don at SEO and have a massive marketing budget. A good idea that was mentioned over at A4U was that if your area is saturated, you could try and find a sub-niche within it - there could be a gap waiting to be filled! Plus, the chances are the more ‘niche’ you go the more likely you are to receive organic traffic.
Linkage! Unless you plan on driving all traffic to your site via PPC, you’ll need to get some inbound links. A good way of finding links is by taking one of your competitor sites or a site that is related to your area and see who is linking to them. Type ‘link: http://www.competitor-site.com/’ into all the major search engines and see what comes up. You should set yourself a target of trying to get x number of links a day or a week or whatever.
If you are planning on using PPC to drive traffic to your site, remember to work out all the figures beforehand. For example, if you get 100 clicks costing you 10p each it’s cost you £10. If the conversion rate for whatever the product is 1% and commission is £5, then you’ll be losing money.
Finally, remember to keep your site updated. Content is king after all, so keep on adding and updating - this is why it’s so important to be an area you find interesting. John Chow has some good posts about creating content on his blog.
Here are a few resources that I found pretty useful (and still do):
Keyword Search Tool Great keyword tool that allows you to check and compare search volumes across the major search engines. The only downside is that it doesn’t always work - sometimes you have to keep refreshing the page to get the results. Still good though.
Keyword Generator Free tool for generating keyword strings and variations for PPC campaigns.
Website Checker Tool that checks your websites meta tags, SE friendliness, load time and more
A4U Forum A forum mainly for UK based affiliates with a wealth of information. There’s tons and tons of really useful posts, it’s worth setting aside some time to browse through it.
Fraser’s Affiliate Podcasts Great for picking up tips and getting a good insight into the industry as a whole.
I know this is only really a quick overview of a few main points, but there’s loads of free info out there about affiliate marketing on forums, blogs etc, all you need to is head to the big G and search!
