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Obviously there is no shortage of advice on the web about how to successfully make money as an affiliate. Some of it is very good, some not so good. Here is one man’s opinion on why so many people fail to make decent money with affiliate programs.
I am addressing CPA deals today. We can talk about leads another time.
1. They look for niche offers – Yeah, you heard it here. Niche sucks. Go after verticals that have heavy demand. Sure, you can select a niche within that vertical, but it is very difficult to make good money selling things that people generally are not looking for online.
2. Wrong type of product - Select areas that fill very specific and deep rooted buyer NEEDS. Just like in offline sales, if is far easier to sell to someone when they want something badly. Think vanity, sex (not content/adult), money, or products that are in high demand that are basically only purchased online (anything where there exists an offline option is bad unless it fits in one of the prior categories mentioned)
3. Too much babble – Find merchants that have good checkout pages and send the visitors there ASAP. You need 60% of all your visitors to get off of your page fast and to the offer.
4. Choosing Low CPA- Find products/services that pay $30+ per sale. This does not mean home furnishings! That does not meet any of the above criteria. Good deals should be high margin offerings that pay 30-50%.
5. Adwords – Adwords can be very effective but do not forget the #2 and #3 choices. You can basically guarantee profit with these engines if you have even the slightest clue.
What you do need to do is:
1. Find an offer with high demand (search) that pays $30+ per sale.
2. Make sure the product either makes someone look better or feel better about themselves OR can help them financially.
3. Make sure that it is much easier to find this product online than at the store/phone book.
4. Create landing pages that are designed to get the person to the merchant’s page or checkout. You cannot take an order so send them somewhere that can. (pre-sell pages are good in some cases but I would opt for a higher # of people hitting the merchant personally)
5. Do simple keyword research and throw ads up on yahoo and msn. Plan on spending $.75 a click. FOCUS ON BIDDING ON AS MANY RELATED BRANDS/PRODUCTS AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN.
6. Use conversion tracking. If the offer works, start the seo process.
Even the laziest and most inept ppc guys (me) can make $30-50 a day per CPA deal with 1 hr work by selecting the right program. Obviously we do not talk about specific programs on here (it would be a mess) but use your head. Think about high margin products – this is where the merchants can really pay. Stop with the super niche and promote products that people actually buy. Use ppc to get going and then focus on organic search for the long haul.
I really believe people have come to “outsmart” themselves and in the process have overlooked what is right in front of them.
Any thought about affiliate promotion really needs to begin and end with who and what you are promoting. Does the merchant have a good checkout/landing page? Do they have compelling sales copy or any USP? Are they paying me at least $30-50 per sale? If not, is it because the margins are too thin or do they want to take 75% of the profits?
Wow, sorry for the long post. I just get asked a lot about what the hot thing is to promote and am shocked at the lousy programs and constant focus on adwords alone I am seeing.
When looking for new products to promote, I look for a few things, products that average around $1.00 EPC, have a relatively high demand, and compared to oversaturated markets don't have an over supply of competition and or spam. Although use spam to your advantage as it can tell you that this is an area where the spam merchants are making money.
Thanks very much!
One point that I may not have driven home when qualifying a merchant (besides if you think they can convert online sales) is you have to decide whether affiliate marketing is simply an "add on" to their business model or a major component.
The elite programs are driving a big portion of their sales through affiliate marketing. Some are driving nearly all of their business through aff sales. Quick response and assistance is a decent indicator but you can usually just tell by a gut feeling. Big networks are typically a negative mark because the merchants often view this as simply another ad network and affiliates as a PITA.
Niche sucks.
Good stuff, mfishy.
1. if i am selling only Samsung cell phones, is that a niche? or is a niche more like selling Samsung DX900 cell phones only?
2. for adwords and other paid search advertising, if I am selling cell phones, would i consider buying terms like "cell phones" if it's not overly competitive? or should i rather focus on "Samsung DX900" type of terms?
thanks.
i'm really curious to do this research myself. alot of people have this favoritizm about adsense and adwords . and other would rather use banner ads . and the reality of it is there are to many variables to even begin to realize what might be right for a particular site/blog/ecom site. ad sense probably does well on some sites but not as good as banners on others. what those are for either of them someone has to know. i've been looking at the major players online and just taking a look at wht they use. obviously i'm noticing alot of them do use adsense and sometimes a combo of banners as well. but i can tell you one thing the person that made all the money in the gold rush was the guy selling the shovels!
[edited by: eljefe3 at 3:00 am (utc) on Sep. 18, 2008]
1. if i am selling only Samsung cell phones, is that a niche? or is a niche more like selling Samsung DX900 cell phones only?
Niche can be a relative term. I would say that Samsung cell phones qualifies as a niche but what it really comes down to is market saturation.
2. for adwords and other paid search advertising, if I am selling cell phones, would i consider buying terms like "cell phones" if it's not overly competitive? or should i rather focus on "Samsung DX900" type of terms?
The only way to know for sure is to test the visitors by trying generalized terms in small quantities (with individual click tracking) and looking at the ROI.
selling blue widgets. buy the term blue widgets.
your roi on the term widgets will be substantial lower.
I doubt most do this, but if you find a profitable niche, you would want to do your own testing to see what lander works best for you. This could be the merchant lander, but until you compare against others, you won't know.
I've heard horror stories at various forums that some unscrupulous merchants were pinching the keywords from their affiliates when they direct linked and were bidding on their terms
There is more to it than this. Google, for example, only allows 1 display URL per domain. The display URL must also match the destination URL. If an affiliate is trying to direct link to the merchant’s site from an Adwords ad, Google only allows one ad with that display URL. Either the merchant’s ad or the affiliate’s ad will not be displayed.
I'd imagine this would upset merchants since they could essentially lose control of their ad copy and would probably cost more to pay affiliate commission than a single click.
This does not always hold true for Yahoo and MSN, but I can definitely see why a merchant would not let affiliates direct link or bid on branded terms. I can also see why affiliate would get upset, but sometimes you just have to be creative and expect that the easy route doesn’t always work.
[edited by: MadeWillis at 3:41 pm (utc) on Sep. 18, 2008]
The elite programs are driving a big portion of their sales through affiliate marketing......Big networks are typically a negative mark because the merchants often view this as simply another ad network and affiliates as a PITA.
You've really hit the nail on the head with this point - couldn't have said it any better than this.
Is direct linking to merchants through PPC advisable, or creating a site/landing page and then take the visitor from there to merchant's site advisable?
If you can do it and get the traffic there is no better way. For seo it is not that simple and some of the ppc experts here can speak to how that messes with quality scores and editorial issues. But all other factors aside, yes, of course it is best to link directly to the order/sales page!
Let me attempt to clarify what I mean by niche.
Selling a specific brand of cell phones is not niche. Cell phones are a highly sought after product. I have not promoted cell phones and do not know if the CPA is high enough and it does run into the major offline competition however. That said, I am certainly not saying my way is the only way - just ONE WAY that has proven to work.
An example that may be clearer is "Diet Pills". Obviously there is a huge demand for weight loss products. Always has been, always will be. Just because you are selling a secret, special, one of a kind, seen-nowhere-else diet pill, does not make your offering niche (in the way I am using the term). I am talking about spending days finding niches where there are very, very few online buyers in the general category.
Conversion rates need to be at 1.5%-2% on decent traffic. If you are just throwing junk out there, that's an entirely different, and often effective strategy as well. But it may be useful to simply do the math...
Another clarification I should make is I am not talking about making $30-50 a day (if I were I should be shot for posting). I am talking about systematically making $30-50 a day for many programs with little effort AND, most importantly, finding what works and beating it till it is dead, then beating it a few more times :)
Many affiliates spend day upon day thinking about strategies when the single most important factor by far is the program itself - so choose wisely!
As I said before, any way you can post a detailed example of a campaign you have done in the past that's no longer valid? (either it died off or expired). if you can post for example, keywords you bought, ad copies you used, and how you discovered that affiliate program, that would make this the great affiliate marketing thread ever! i never see anyone posting detailed real life examples of successful affiliate campaigns (and i am not talking about the ones that are making money RIGHT NOW, i am talking about things that made money before but no longer works)
i am talking about things that made money before but no longer works
and the fish you catch yourself tastes sweetest of all
@mfishy ..mes respects
So here I go again as PPC cannon fodder. Time to refresh my HTML table skills. Time to write some Top 10 Reviews about a very high demand market available only online. Time to watch all my leftover hard-earned money disappear in a blur of non-converting clicks...
Then I'll curl up in a corner and lick my wounds for another year until I save some money and stumble upon another inspiring post.
Seriously, for some of us it just doesn't come easy. That's why in our desperation we end up clicking one of your ads and buying this affiliate course or that tool and stay up late reading and learning them while you earn commissions off us in your sleep. ;)
You can buy "long tail" keywords but sometimes long tail keywords are not long at all, just one really specific search term & yes, one search term can be very specific and relevant & pull in a $300 payout on a $0.15 click.
Too many people looking for secrets when they could be making money promoting stuff that sells with very simple tactics.
A fine thread.
I presume it can help to have several sites already, so can link to a fresh affiliate site - as then higher chance of traffic thro google n other search engines(? - or just rely on ppc, with search engine traffic unlikely in hard fought for area, without way more work)
SEO (AKA link building) is an entirely different topic and that will take a lot more than an hour lol
Is direct linking to merchants through PPC advisable, or creating a site/landing page and then take the visitor from there to merchant's site advisable?
Just to flat out say landing pages are good or bad scares me...it really depends on your requirements. For a college student wanting to make lunch money I would say avoid landing pages and focus on arbitrage - be quick & dirty about it. For someone creating a defensible business I would advise building your own brand, community and destination for customers.
