Ross - 11:56 pm on Aug 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

Wow, a couple of weeks back Brett bemoaned the fact that none of the big hitters were posting in a particular thread about affiliate marketing, well they're out here in force, I feel suitably humble in such exalted company.

If I may, I'd like to put the case for the Method A (money making) web sites and how I personally make a living from them. Before you all go off searching my profile, the site there is my hobby site...everyone has to have a passion !.

Let's start with a few pros and cons :

For
- Each web site is small (2-4 pages) and consists of simple HTML, perfect for the graphically challenged - ME
- Use of pay per click search engines means that the money starts to roll in quickly
- If Google decides to drop a few sites my world will not crumble
- Careful interlinking of these simple sites can sometimes produce amazingly good results on certain major search engines ;)

Against
- You need to be numerically aware and "quick on your toes" to get the best from these sites. Results need to be checked regularly.
- 99% of webmasters believe that affiliate marketers are the scum of the earth, 99% of affiliate marketers believe that Method A web sites are the lowest of the low, which means that you will be regarded as a sub-human life form...but hey you're making money, they probably aren't :).

Now some random jottings that might help someone to make money from Method A web sites

Find the right affilate schemes / products to promote. This is a tricky process that involves a number of factors such as what percentage of commission is paid, how competitive are those products in the PPC engines, is it a product that people go on to the internet to buy such as air tickets, hotel bookings or house insurance rather than a product that people just dream of buying such as a Ferrari. If you can find a mundane product costing around $100 that most of the population has to buy, and where the top bid on Overture is 6 cents then don't tell another living soul, just PM me your suggestion ;)

Keep each site tightly themed, domains and hosting are cheap, so rather than building www.widgets.com build www.red-widgets.com, www.green-widgets.com, www.blue-widgets.com etc. You will have lots more chance of getting a good ranking for blue widgets or green widgets than for the highly competitive widgets keyword.

Buy domains that include your keywords. Whilst Google seems to be giving slight preference to sites that contain the keyword in the URL there's absolutely no reason not to do it.

The more adventurous of us will host our widgets sites on different machines, then link them together whilst looking over our shoulder to make sure that net_wizard isn't lurking round the nearest corner ;)

This is the big one If you can find 4 suppliers of blue widgets that are running an affiliate scheme, sign up for them all and put all 4 on your www.blue-widgets.com site. I think that subconsciously our surfer likes to compare prices and products before making a decision. If he can do it without leaving your site there is every chance that you'll make the sale. This is especially important when paying for clicks from the search engines. It is entirely feasible that each of those 4 blue widgets products will convert at 3% but if one PPC click is bringing you 2, 3 or 4 chances of making the sale your conversion ratio is suddenly 6% 9% or 12%. Believe me when I tell you that this methodology works wonderfully, try it and see for yourself.

An example of being "quick on your toes" - an affiliate network had www.our-blue-widgets.com paying 10% commission. I followed the links on to the our-blue-widgets site to find that they were offering an in-house affiliate scheme that was paying 15% commission...I signed up direct. In fact all but 2 of the affiliate schemes that I'm involved in are direct, in-house schemes. They are all household names which gives me a degree of confidence that they will pay me every month and so far that's been true.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify, don't ever stop looking for the next opportunity. Keep abreast of all search engine developments (by reading this forum of course).

Finally, if you've hung around here for long enough to have picked up a degree of skill in SEO but can't face the prospect of trying to sell your services to the general public then take the selfish route and use your skills to promote your own affiliate sites. You've a head start on anybody starting from scratch and I'd be very surprised if you weren't successful at your new venture.

Good Luck

Ross