3 steps to making more money via Affiliate Marketing

The most important things to focus on....

[Procyon]

1. Increasing the number of customers you serve
2. Increasing the commission % you receive
3. Increasing the frequency of your orders (repeat traffic etc.)

Too obvious? Yeah. :)

However, sometimes it's easy to get distracted and forget what the main goal is - to make money.

If you test, dump what's not working, and repeat what works, and constantly apply yourself to improving those 3 points, the money will flow.

More sites, more pages, more uniques, more money.

[sugarrae]

>>>No offense, but $.45 cpm is not worth my time.

agreed.

[Michael Anthony]

Thanks arran. You're right about my bank balance too!

[laertes]

"Find ways to retain your visitors. This is different for every site, but it's worth the brainstorming."

That is debatable. We don't get paid for someone surfing our sites and using up bandwidth. Best to get them off to the merchant site ASAP.

The advice to use PPC to drive affiliate traffic should be taken with a big grain of salt. For most lucrative affiliate PPA items, Adwords-Overture is too expensive to provide a good ROI I have found. Very tricky unless you track conversions in multiple layers. Both your landing page and the merchants must convert at stellar rates, the merchant must be rocksolid in terms of getting checks to you, and CPC must be minimal. Be prepared for failure in the majority of campaigns, but once you find a good campaign, push it to the max.

[vabtz]

>> Drastic:

>>>Step waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outside your comfort zone, your economic status, lifestyle, and your interests when finding things to promote.

>>Excellent point, ski.

>>Other than the normal keyword channels and hot topics du jour, do you have any suggestions for getting the creative juices flowing on these new ideas?

I read the Wall Street Journal for idea's and trends. There is a huge breadth of topics covered geared towards people with some cash. Also it helps me know what Madison Avenue and online advertising companies are doing, which I find useful.

[Michael Anthony]

"For most lucrative affiliate PPA items, Adwords-Overture is too expensive to provide a good ROI I have found"

Wrong. My 200 odd associates and I average 200% plus ROI from exactly this type of activity.

I accept, however, that the poster was clearly basing his conclusion on a sample of one, namely him/herself, which is maybe why the results of the research were slightly askew :)

[Beagle]

"Find ways to retain your visitors. This is different for every site, but it's worth the brainstorming."

That is debatable. We don't get paid for someone surfing our sites and using up bandwidth. Best to get them off to the merchant site ASAP.

"Different for every site," is the key here, I'd think. Getting them off to the merchant site ASAP could be the goal if a site is built primarily for one-shot purchases. But mine needs returning visitors; if they don't find anything interesting enough to keep them on the site for awhile, why should they come back to my site instead of just going directly to the merchant next time?

[MovingOnUp]

"That is debatable." "We don't get paid for someone surfing our sites and using up bandwidth." "The advice to use PPC to drive affiliate traffic should be taken with a big grain of salt." "Adwords-Overture is too expensive to provide a good ROI I have found." "Very tricky..." "Both your landing page and the merchants must convert at stellar rates..." "The merchant must be rocksolid in terms of getting checks to you, and CPC must be minimal." "Be prepared for failure..."

And after that, it seems the best tip one could provide would be this:

Look for was to succeed rather than excuses and reasons that you can't succeed.

[Travel]

sources for idea-

keep a notebook or voice recorder Handy at all times- the two sources in broad terms are other people's ideas and what people want

For example- I see a commercial/news show/movie/magazine and think- that looks good/fun/interesting - I'm immediately wondering how to tie it into a site or article- how do I make that into a niche. The act of writing that down triggers new ideas.

An example in the world of travel- I recently leaned a large percent of people who camp spend at least one night in a hotel. I don't camp enough to have made the connection- but that opens up a whole new world of ideas. Hotels near great camping areas to escape bad weather. Hotels for road trippers going to camping areas. Hotels with kitchenettes may be useful to campers who often are budgeting and have a family along...

Another idea- expand on success
Example- I worked with an art site that sold pictures of one item more than any other- so we took that item and brainstormed- and opened it up to sell photos and drawings- then optimized just black and white photos, then re-segmented the black and whites which were doing so well into another sub classification- just kept taking more advantage of the niche we had found.

Another idea- expand on opportunity
I play a game with myself on a fun site I run. I look at the key words that attracted traffic in the previous month and find a cutoff- say 100 searches. I pick the 5 terms that came closest to without going over 100 searches and I re-optimize, add articles, find links...until they are over 100 - rinse and repeat with any target number.