Launching an Affiliate Offer: From Zero to Profitability, Part I

Going from zero to profitability can often be the most frustrating part of launching an affiliate offer.

Now I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of finding a good offer or testing an offer. I’m going to assume you’ve found a good offer that:

Other affiliates are having success with, I always go with offers with proven track records
That has substantial profit potential, if I can’t potentially make several $1000 a day profit with the offer, I don’t waste my time with it
The next step is to find a good list of keywords using tools such as Wordtracker, Google Keywords Tool, etc. There’s dozens of keyword tools on the market so take your pick!

And no, the secret is NOT in the keyword tool you’re using.

Make sure you do a thorough job with keyword research, read this post of mine to get some insights on how to do that.

Now Once you’ve done your keyword research, & setup your Adwords campaign (tightly targeted Adgroups with relevant adcopy) you have a decision to make:

Do you make a landing page for this offer or do you do Googlecash?

I would strongly recommend making a landing page. However, if you’re still testing the offer, the best way to do that is to buy a domain name and do a framed redirect to the affiliate site.

Google doesn’t allow this, but they won’t catch on for months. It’s just for testing, so no worries.

If you’re serious about the offer then construct a landing page. If you don’t know where to start regarding your landing page design, I would recommend doing a little market research by studying what other affiliates are doing, what elements are similar in their landing pages.

And then construct your own UNIQUE landing page.

I know some of you have a hard time with that part, but trust me, if you only rip people off you’re only cheating yourself-you won’t learn anything and you’ll ultimately limit your own success.

I would recommend using a good split test program to set up a split test url for your Google campaign right off the bad.

Also, make sure you have your affiliate manager install Google conversion tracking and your split test tracking code on the thank page, and if they refuse drop the offer and move on.

You always want to do an A/B split test on your landing page AND use crazyegg to determine how many people are clicking through to the affiliate offer, and what affiliate link they’re clicking on.

Test the colors, headline, graphics, anything you can think of.

TEST!

Once you’ve launched your offer you want to carefully monitor it. The first sign of a healthy launch is if you break even or are just slightly negative right off the bat. Then your job is to optimize your campaign

Now there are several other scenario you can hit:

You’re getting barely any traffic, but the offer is converting! You need to bid on more keywords or increase your bids if your bid position is low.
You’re getting lots of traffic, but no conversions. You’re either bidding on the wrong keywords, or have a poor traffic source (such as some smaller ppc search engines or the Google content network, etc)
You’re getting lots of traffic, have conversion, but your ROI is low. Your either bidding too high, and if that’s not the case then there’s a problem with your landing page, I would revamp your landing page.
No matter what scenario your campaign ends up in the key to success is persistence.

Think about it, if other affiliates are succeeding with the offer, then it’s only matter of getting the right traffic to a landing page(s) that converts.

You have to have the mindset: I’m going to keep testing different landing pages, ads, keywords, and traffic sources until I get this offer profitable.

Once you’re at the point where you’re getting decent traffic and your landing page is converting, albeit you may still be breaking even or slightly negative, then you’re ready to go on to the next step, optimization, which I’ll discuss in the next post.

8 questions and answers for Affiliate Marketing beginners

I quite often get beginners to affiliate marketing asking me questions via MSN, email or on various forums. Now I don’t mind this at all. Here is my top 8 questions and answers that I get asked most often.

1. What is the best affiliate program?
Now how am I supposed to answer this? The “best” affiliate program will differ from site to site. Lets say that my best performing affiliate program right now is William Hill Bingo, because I feature it heavily on my bingo site. Does that mean you should promote it on your blog for digital cameras? Of course not! Instead try asking these questions…”What is the best performing affiliate program in the electrical sector, specifically digital cameras”. Then drill down and ask why, does the program offer a high CPA? Maybe it has a zero reversal policy or just converts damn well. This is the information you need to find out.

2. What is the best affiliate network?
As above, impossible to answer. If I was a finance affiliate for example then I would maybe pick OMG who are pretty much a niche network working in the financial sector. So great if you are in finance, but not so great for my bingo site. Again ask which network is the best for say high street brands, Buy.at is the answer btw. Or maybe the best network for a wide range of smaller merchants and a very proactive staff? Webgains. What about a mix of the above 2? Affiliate Window.

3. What is a good CTR for Google AdWords?
As long as you are making money it doesn’t really matter. Seriously, people obsess about this but at the end of the day if you are making money then that’s what counts. I have some campaigns that have CTR rates at 70% but earn very little, some at 2% that earn me enough for a new car. It doesn’t matter.

4. How many clicks should I send to a merchant to see if they convert?
500. Not 10, not 100 but 500. Some people will argue that it should be lower but I always send at least 500 very targeted clicks via a ppc campaign before I give it a hit/miss.

5. Are there any eBooks I should read to learn about affiliate marketing/PPC/SEO?
No, none. I’ve never read any and don’t know any successful affiliate marketeers who have either. Instead read blogs and forums and most of all, just do it! Nothing beats good old fashioned trial and error.

6. What is the best niche to promote? What makes the most money?
Again, impossible to answer. I operate in a few niches now that are very profitable to me - but only because I have been here for years and have a loyal user base, established sites and good traffic. For a newbie to enter would be very hard and would involve a lot of cash - for ppc. Even then there are no guarantees. Instead, don’t pick a market to promote just because you think you can coin it in. Instead build a site about something you are passionate about and knowledgeable about. Thats all it takes.

7. I don’t know anything about HTML, PHP, coding, web design, graphic design, datafeeds or anything remotely technical. So how can I build a website and make money?
Neither do I! Thanks to Blogger, and Wordpressyou can now have a site up and running in literally minutes. Yes you young ‘uns have it easy. Back in the day, I had to learn how to use MS FrontPage and hard code my sites from scratch.

8. Should I pay for a SEO company to optimise my site?
No. Waste of money in my opinion. I think on-page SEO just isn’t that important at all. Instead trawl the web and find out what makes a site rank well. Learn about link building, directory and article submissions. But more importantly just build a good site that people will *want* to link to. Thats all there is to it.

Anybody got any more questions?

What I’m listening to right now: Prince - “Sometimes it Snows in April” I’m going to see him again tomorrow!

Topics: Affiliate Marketing | 26 comments so far
Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

How my automatic niche sites bring me $100/day

Hi,everyone,let me introduce myself(English is not my first language,so sorry for my english).I am in internet marketing for years in my own country.I have build many sites in the past few years.Things are changed very fast in internet,you need constantly think and keep up with it.Thanks to WF,I have learn so much in WF,and today,I will share my story,hope it will help you.

A few month ago,I saw a thread in WF talk about build a automatic niche blog,(thanks for Keith Kogane).I decide to follow his model and build a few automatic niche sites. Everything works fine except one thing,I can't find enough rss feed with full articles.Most rss feed is only including summary,some only have titles.Without full articles rss,this model will not working,so I have to stop this attempt.


A few weeks later,one of my friends send me a message,he want me test his new site - Convert any RSS to full text Rss, it can convert normal rss to full content rss.This is what I just looking for.So I try this service with the automatic site model and find it works great.


Current now,I have 3 accounts with fullrssfeed.com,and already build 12 niche wordpress based sites and a small forum with those accounts.All sites set to automatically update everyday.I add adsense code and a few affiliate links in all sites.Most of money comes from adsense.The average earnings of my adsense is $80/day,some day it reach $100.This is very inspire,my adsense account only earn a few dollars a day before.


Ok,I will show the detail of what I do now.

1.First thing always keywords research,and choose niches for your sites.

2.Setup wordpressmu.For niche wordpress sites,I use wordpressmu,I use it because it is easy to manage,only need install once,and use one database for all sites.And more,wordpress and its plugins update frequently,with wordpressmu,it only need update once,if you use wordpress for each site,you need do same thing several times.



3.Config wordpressmu.Here is list of plugins I used.
Sociable
All in One SEO Pack
All in One Adsense and YPN - For Adsense code,I saw many people said set adsense look like one part of your site.And many guys suggest use color like this:

Code:

Border=#FFFFFF
Title=#000000
Background=#FFFFFF
Text=#808080
URL=#008000They said this is best color for adsense.But for me,I usually use different Background color other than my site.I have test many times in many of my site before,for me,use different color to emphasize the adsense ad usually get better CTR.
Google Analytics for WordPress
Google XML Sitemaps - Because this plugin is for wordpress,here you should set different setting for each site in wordpressmu.Can't use the default setting 'www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml' as your sitemap url.Because all site will use it.I setup sitemap url like this 'www.yourdomain.com/yourdomain-sitemap.xml' in each site. I also saw there are other sitemap plugins for wordpressmu maybe better,but this one is enough for me.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Simple Tags
WP-o-Matic - This one is the most important plugin to get contents from fullrssfeed.com to my sites.There are another plugins may do same thing as WP-o-Matic.I tested Feedwordpress,but it not working with fullrssfeed.com,at least in my sites.
WP-SpamFree
WP-PageNavi
WP Super Cache
Multi Site Manager - Allow you add domains and create new sites in wordpressmu.
4.After config wordpressmu,now start add domains.I use top domains for all my sites.

5.For wordpressmu setting,it will need add categories,add site name etc.I also add clickbank and CJ code in the sites,althought adsense is the biggest money for me.

6.Now you can add full rss in WP-o-Matic,start get contents in your sites.You can set it update contents every few hours or days.
First search keywords in google and find nice sites that offer rss,then use fullrssfeed.com to get full rss url.

Next,setup WP-o-Matic and 'Add campaign',then add full rss feed url in it,then one setting you should pay attention to :'Type of post to create' setting.Usually it set to 'Published',but in some of my sites,I want the sites more professional,so set it as 'Draft' first,then publish the good posts and delete the posts not wanted manually later.This only take a few minutes for me everyday.The other problem of this plugin is that,after a few weeks running,it start post duplicate contents.Someone already have a fixed script to solve the problem in wordpress,it need a little change in wordpressmu,the table name in wordpressmu is different.

I usually create a few full rss feed url for each of my sites.

7.Here is the end of setup.From now on,the big thing is promote your sites.For those niche sites,most of my traffic is from google.So seo is important.There are many threads in the forum talk about promote that you can follow.Like:
Article Marketing
Social Bookmark
Link Exchange
BackLinks
...

------------------------------------------

Everyday,I spend about 1 hour for thost sites.Usually use a few minutes for 'Published' job as mentioned before,and spend most time to do promote and seo,like backlinks,social bookmark,etc.BTW I still think backlink is the most important thing for seo.


With those steps,you will get as many automatic sites as you want.You can set it total automatically.


I set some of my sites semi-automatically.If you want your site more professional,Don't 'setup and forget it'.If you have no time to update and promote sites everyday,do it once a week,just don't give up.Insist on this for a few month,some of keywords will get good position in google,and you will get good result.


All my contents are from other sites,so copyright is first thing.Usually I will contact those sites ask them if I can use their contents by including their links in the post,most webmasters are willing to do it,because they will get backlinks and a few traffic from my sites.Also someone may ask all contents are from other sites,will google punish my sites by this? With my experience,if you sites copy from one site,usually it will be punished,if it your stuff are from many sites,it will not happen,at least all my sites are fine.Each of my sites use more than 4 full rss feed url,so the contents in each of my site are from more than 4 sites.

I have setup a small forum about one month before,also use full rss to do automatic posts.For forum,you can use Vbulletin or Simple Machine Forum,VB have 'RSS Feed' tool for import post automatically,SMF can use Mod 'RSS Feed Poster' do same job.I can not find any similar Mod in PHPBB forum.My forum post more than 100 Topics everyday automatically.Because this forum is new,I will post my experience later.

That's all,Hope you can get good ideas from my story.If you have questions,you can leave message here or in the blog I just opened for this.

JUST SPILL THE BEANS! From 0 to 2000+ hits per day in 10 (TEN) minutes. 99.9% Automated

How to get at least 2k hits per day in a matter of minutes.

"Can't be done", i hear you say.. well, check this out!


create a twitter account
set up a wordpress (2.5.1 works best) blog on a generic domain.
install "wp autoblog" or "wp-o-matic".
install twitter poster ( WordPress › Twitter Poster WordPress Plugins )
Now, (do this each day, takes about 10 minutes) have a look at search.twitter.com and note down the hot trends..

Head over to Google's hot trends and note down their hot trends.

Nnoooow, go to the google blogsearch, perform a search for those trending topics and get the RSS feed of the search results.. copy the rss feed's url and insert it into your blogs wp-autoblog feature.

WHAT THIS WILL DO:


your blog will aggregate the hottest trends
your blog will auto twitter the aggregated headlines with a link to your blog
people search on the twitter realtime search, find your tweet and click through to your blog
you get mad traffic

I started this as an experiment three weeks ago and i get a constant 5k unique hits per day, according to awstats.

Why am i sharing this?! Dunno, perhaps i'm just stupid (Not really, i have other sources of income - i just thought it was time to share some stuff).


CHEERZ,
CHRIS!

Article Spinning Tips

I've been manually spinning quite a lot of articles lately and wanted to share with you a couple tips.

Firstly, look to break a sentence down into 2, 3 or 4 parts (depending on how long it is) and then spin short phrases within it. Doing so creates a fair few variations of a sentence whilst keeping the structure and sense of it. For example...

{Making sure|Ensuring} {everyone is|employees are} {working toward|focused on} a {common |}goal {can be|is} as simple as {writing|noting} the goals down and {posting|sticking} them in {a common|an easily visible} area. {To keep employees right up-to-date|Taking this a step further}, {management|managers} {can|could} even plot the progress {toward the goals|being made}. {This is advisable|Try this} because {simply|only} {finding out|being made aware} {at the end of the time period allotted|after the allotted time has elapsed} that a goal was not {achieved|reached|accomplished} {does little to boost|damages} morale.

Secondly, try to vary the length of sentences. I've found this to significantly affect how 'unique' an article is classed as. This is how you can do it...

Often people change career because they feel that they are no longer making progress in their life{, which is something that everyone needs to do.|.}

...this example then gives the following variations...

1) Often people change career because they feel that they are no longer making progress in their life.

2) Often people change career because they feel that they are no longer making progress in their life, which is something that everyone needs to do.

It's easy enough to do and normally raises the level of uniqueness by a percentage point.

As a bonus tip, using a piece of software called 'Power Article Rewriter' makes it really simple to add spinning syntax to an article. If you're spinning articles and not using it, or at least something that does a similar job, then you're missing out.

Finally, before anyone jumps in and says that I'm wasting my time spinning articles, and the whole duplicate content debate kicks off again, I spin articles because I've found that people are more willing to publish them on their websites and blogs if they are at least a bit different from what has already been published elsewhere