The podcast is now up for your listening pleasure - if you would like a summary first - Jeremy has it here. I got a chance to hang out with Jeremy a bit in Chicago and at pubcon in Vegas - and we’re gonna do an episode of NetIncome this evening. It’s a bit late notice - but we’ll be discussing how folks can dive into affiliate marketing, and take their efforts to the next level. I’ve always had a mindful eye for affiliate marketing - but done very little until the last year or so, and starting to get much heavier into it now. I’ll be talking a bit about the progression from consultant to affiliate, and the crossovers between the two, as well as grilling Jeremy on how to become a better affiliate. If you have any questions for me to ask Shoe - now’s the time.
Affiliate marketing is tough. Anyone who tells you different is most likely very very smart, or very very stupid. Smart affiliates use button pusher marketing to crank out large sites quite often. I think these sites certainly help with the size of the SE’s index, though I don’t imagine many of them contribute to the quality of their indexes. The best affiliate marketing folks are generally very technically savvy as well as marketing savvy. I really respect the opinions of those who have been successful at affiliate marketing, because I know it takes a lot of work, ambition, and dedication. I’ve never been what I would consider successful with affiliate marketing, but I have dabbled a bit, and listened A LOT. There is definitely some gold available for those up to the challenge.
It’s getting pretty tough to come up with a weekly tool list these days. Mr. Ploppy’s list will most likely be a less frequent occurence in the near future. If you have requests for future lists, be sure to let me know, and I’ll try to keep the tools coming as I come accross them.
If you have tools you would like to see added to this list, don’t hesitate to let me know as well. With out further ado…
Affiliate Marketing Tools
Affiliate marketing is an awesome opportunity for those who are self-motivated. Brand your affiliate program as the best out there for your industry. In my mind, affiliate marketing is the retail distribution channel of the virtual world. I sometime wish I fell into the self-motivated category more often to create a fleet of affiliate sites for myself, but I stay with the security of bein’ a SEO consultant. The affiliate realm has really become an entity onto itself, and takes dedication to stay up to date with changes. Understand how affiliates work.
I recently had a former client who had set up an affiliate program with Shareasale write and ask how he could more actively promote his affiliate program. Again, it made me realize that a program will only be as successful as it’s affiliates, and the pareto principle definitely comes into play (meaning 90% of your sales will come from 10% of your people). If your program doesn’t stand out, you won’t be remarkable. Attracting the right people and keeping them motivated is critical to the success of an affiliate marketing program. Creating working relationships with good synergy is key as well. If you sell peanut butter, partner with a site that sells jelly. Make it EASY for those around you to make money, and they will often try to reciprocate. Work with your affiliates to get rankings and sales.
(more…)
Okay, the title is a hoax. You caught me. I’m a liar who likes to tell stories. There is no “magic formula for website success”. There are only best practices. As a search engine marketer (SEO/ SEM..whatever you want to call it), we are really moving towards being project managers (yes, I harp about this all the time). As a project manager, you have to understand how all the tools at your disposal work, and how they could work better. I’m going to tell you exactly what best practices *I* would use as a guide for marketing a retail (or better yet manufacturer) website online.
Assumptions:
- You have a worthwhile product
- You have exceptional profit margins
- You have a well trained, enthusiastic staff that is willing to work and learn
- You have a plan for growth
- You are willing to change when necessary
- You have a qualified web development team
- You have someone who will handle link development and PPC
10 marketing strategies that matter
Months 1 - 3
Month 1 - Planning
Spend the first month planning. Document and consider every angle to your marketplace. Define your unique selling points. Devise ways you can be remarkable by your customers. Brainstorm and write down EVERY idea in your head that is even remotely related to your new online business. Write down keywords. Start organizing your ideas and writing copy for your pages. Delegate responsibilities to your staff. Start dividing up the work.
Compleat guide to SEM I
Compleat guide to SEM II
Affiliate marketers -
What they do:
Create “affiliate sites”, rank them high and get commissions off online sales. Affiliate marketing is strikingly similar to a modern version retail sales. Affiliate marketers are paid a percentage based on many criteria…as with retail sales…location is everything….with affiliate marketing the location is at the top of the serps rather than mainstreet. The more traffic to a site (or foot traffic to a retail outlet) the more likely the customers are to pay a higher price. The more people the better the chance of converting enough folks to make a profit. In my mind, the best affiliate marketers are the pros of the SEO industry. They are the people willing to get “down and dirty” and just sell. There is no school for affiliate marketing - learn online and run with it. It takes a true entreprenuerial mentality. An affiliate marketer must understand all aspects of how the web works…user psychology, web development, search engine optimization, etc. Affiliate marketers “control their own destiny”, and seem to see opportunity in every crisis. They are soldiers of fortune that create Christmas sites in July (or July of two years previous now.) Affiliate marketers are often the “blackhats” that give the industry a bad name as well. This works both ways, as they also do the “dirty work” that corporations want no part of to keep their reputation from being tarnished. They will be happy to garner the traffic that goes with cutting edge borderline techniques, they just would rather have the affiliates do them to keep a safe distance from liability.
How it might change:
The techniques will of course change. Competitive industries will become more cutthroat with things like Googlebowling as people realize the potentials spoils. Focus on NICHE. Keep searching for high demand/ low competition areas to target. As algorithms get better the methodology will of course have to evolve with it. Some things that have changed over the last couple years are the rate at which sites grow and get links. The types of links will certainly become more of an issue with links pages, reciprocal links, off-topic links, and other such techniques being devalued as time progresses. Choose one of two routes - 1. 500 sites that make $1 per day. 2. One site that makes $500 per day. Depending on your route you will use different techniques. Learning them all and coming up with a hybrid approach is probably safest and best. Good affiliates are like chameleons. They blend into their environment, and stay well under the radar in failure and success.
How to become an affiliate marketer:
As with any occupation, you must study hard and learn constantly. The initial learning curve is tough. Start with some of the other SEO related occupations I will be covering over the next week or so. Work in web design and development while you start to learn as they are critical skills to SEO. Consulting and making decisions from working theories is generally a good next step. Experiment and read often. Find some good merchants, and build around what you know to start.
Here’s some places to start:
- WMW Affiliate Forum
- SuperAff Bookmarks - including affiliate and hosting forums
- Affiliate Network List
- Abestweb Aff Marketing Forum
Favorite Affiliate threads from WMW
- Building a business around affiliate programs
- Finding good affiliate niches
- Secrets of affiliate programs
- What do affiliates want?
- Affiliate marketing commandments
A little short on resources here for potential affs…maybe I’ll work on building this, or ask Mr. Ploppy to help. Whatya waitin’ for? Go get your slice of the affiliate marketing pie!
Coming soon - other SEO Occupations:
- SEO Consultants
- Web developers
- Public Relations People
Button pusher SEO is usually what the “white hat” mouseketeers like to whine about loudest. The rationale, is that it is that it is really easy to do, and tends to be on the “spammy” side because of things because it is generally somewhat automated. Automated, however, doesn’t always mean easy. Button pushing SEO’s, work very hard to create tools that will create content, links, and ultimately revenue with techniques that push the envelope. They don’t worry about update schedules, they worry about revenue and developing improved tools.
While I am sometimes a bit miffed when I see a button pusher/ brute force SEO’d site beating me in the SERPs, I have to respect the intelligence and creativity it took to create such a site. Several things have contributed to the proliferation of these type of sites including the ability to scrape pages (wikipedia, dmoz, etc.), aggregating dynamic content with RSS, adsense (which easily monetizes any topical content), affiliate programs and more. This rash of adsense scraper sites is contributing to increasing volumes of discussion on the topic.
The question is how long will this information pollution continue? Since Adwords is G’s main source of income, are they in any hurry to stop these sh*tty adsense scraper sites? There are plenty of people willing to continue using “the blend” (which I even remember getting a nice little flip manual guide from G recommending it as one of the ways to increase click through rate) and cashing in nice adsense checks by cranking out mountains of content to further pollute the information superhighway (is it still trendy to call it that?). With the growth of this garbage we may soon be calling it the Newark Net Back Alley. The worst part is I can’t even say that I blame scrapers, in some regards they are doing something similar to Google though on a much smaller scale (and a much poorer job) by taking some information, cacheing it and attempting to organize it, then putting ads up to make money off of it.
As for me, I try to use fairly decent original content, but am still a big fan of “the blend”. Since most folks don’t have a clue between an ad and regular search result, I’m guessing it’s not that big of a deal. The results from Adwords should, in theory, be highly relevant anyhow, as someone wouldn’t be stupid enough to pay for the click if it wasn’t relevant. I’m not overly concerned if the ads clicked on my site only have the visitor stay for 10 seconds. G doesn’t care either. The only person who cares is the person blindly throwing money at PPC. Wise up irrational spenders and either turn off content targeting or start tracking better.
If you’re worried about Google being the only ones polluting the web, don’t be, affiliate programs will most certainly help, and Yahoo will be contributing soon too with their publisher program.
One definite solution in the realm would be source exclusion which Blowsearch has reportedly already implemented. Protecting advertisers is going to be nearly as important in continued growth for G as protecting investors intrests will be. My guess is that the purchase of Urchin should help to aid in combating fraud and other related problems.
Tag:
The rumor that spilled and started yesterday was that MSN will be announcing their new pay per click service very soon. While this is not a big surprise in itself since they have been recruiting for the positions associated with the new service for quite a while, it does bring up some interesting questions.
How will the existing relationship with Overture be handled?
From what I understand, the contract extends to some time in 2006, and I don’t imagine that was a very cheap contract. My guess is that M$ will continue to use Overture inventory until they have built up a strong enough user base to support themselves.
Can I get cheap nickle/dime clicks on incredible keywords?
As mentioned above, it’s pretty doubtful, but the idea of bidding on “search engine optimization consultant” for a dime sure has my motor running. Even if quick-to-adopt internet marketer’s don’t get nickle and dime clicks on highly competitive phrases, there still has to be some “sweet spots” between the cut off point of Overture inventory and Microsoft’s new inventory.
How ’bout some affiliate arbitrage?
With the above mentioned question in mind…can I bid low and sell the traffic high? Time to dig out some of those old affiliate username/ passes.
Will there be coupons at conferences?
MSN…if you’re reading this…you can make up for the shaft that you gave me and others when you turned us away at the door. Learn from G…break out some nice big PPC coupons and be sure to look the other way when we come up to your booth to grab a handful of them.
What will Google do?
This move puts the spotlight on the former media darling in my opinion. With both MSN and Yahoo (with their soon to be announced contextual advertising publishers program) going after G’s cash cows what are they going to come up with to continue their projected growth levels?
What will Yahoo do? (oh right, the contextual advertising thing)?
This has still gotta be a pretty hefty hit to Yahoo revenue when this one slides away. Not real sure what the “experts” say MSN market share is, but I know what it is in my stats, and a lot of times it seems fairly close to the ‘hoo. Since a very substantial portion of revenue/profit comes from paid search ads and Y is losing 20, 30, 40%(?) of their paid search distrubution…well…I think you can do the math.
I think ultimately, the same as a 3rd organic SE, the competition will be positive and will fuel positive growth in the industry. Perhaps, MSN will even take a stronger stance on click fraud and take more responsbility for aiding publishers with monitoring fraud levels. Hopefully we will also see some other nice services and tools evolve out of the competition that will make life as an internet marketing consultant a bit easier.
Discussions:
Discussion at Webmasterworld.com
WMW Supporter’s forum discussion
Tag:
