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These posts all generate replies from people who have been lucky with this approach and found something that works. What they ignore though, is even more important: how do you know that your chosen topic will create a profitable site?
The simple answer is that you don't. With this approach, the chances are that you can spend months SEOing a site to the top of the SERPS only to discover that it just doesn't convert.
My approach, and one that I believe most successful affiliates use, is to start with a simple site and PPC some traffic to it to establish whether or not the thing SELLS. If it works through PPC, then and only then do I start SEO.
For every poster who comes on here telling how they SEO'd a site to the top of the SERPS and have done very well ever since, I bet there are hundreds who have doggedly followed this approach only to find no sales from their hard-earned rankings. These failures then convince the individual that they just can't succeed, so they quit.
So. for the benefit of anyone on the brink of starting their first aff site, please please remember the single most important factor in a/m is CONVERSIONS not TRAFFIC or RANKINGS.
Just "building a content site" isn't much of a business plan, either. You have to have traffic targets, conversion targets, and KNOW how you will get, and keep, that traffic.
When I first started experimenting with AM, I wrote pages of content. It go me nowhere.
I took a step back, looked for a profitable market(s), and went from there.
Conversion is definitely important. My most successful site has about a 7% conversion ratio. 1 out of 5 sessions on that site results in click through to a merchant, and 1 out of 3 of those clicks results in a sale, producing a net conversion of 1 out of 15 visitors. With nearly a $7 average commission per order, I'm earning almost $0.50 per visitor. I'm continually tweaking the site to increase conversions, average order size, and commissions.
I don't think it really matters whether you test with SEO or with PPC. PPC will let you know how well things are working much quicker, but can be extremely costly. How many posts have you seen saying "Help! I just spent $2000 on PPC today and only generated $40 in sales!"? At least with SEO, it doesn't cost anything to test things out.
What I've always done, and what I suggest, is for people to build a site that meets a very specific need that isn't currently being met. Once the idea is formed, it is usually pretty clear what types of merchants and/or products can be effectively promoted on the site. The entire site can then be built with the goals of 1) meeting the unique need, 2) promoting relevant affiliate programs, and 3) optimizing the pages for search engines.
When I talk about optimizing pages for search engines, that's a fairly minor factor in my mind. I'm not talking about generating keyword lists and building tons of useless (to visitors) keyword optimized pages. I'm talking about things like these: 1) Making sure the titles and meta description will look compelling in search engines. 2) Making sure the most important parts of the page are most prominent. 3) Making sure that the linking structure of the site allows search engines to find all the pages, and that pages are focused on specific things.
I usually don't recommend PPC until you have a good feel for the conversions and commissions, so that you'll know what kind of bid you can afford to make.
By designing a site around a specific need that isn't currently being met, you can get a ton of free traffic from word of mouth, repeat customers, free unsolicited links, press mentions, blog and forum mentions, etc. This keeps you from having to rely on expensive, competitive PPC traffic. This also keeps you from relying on slow, fickle natural search traffic. These two sources then become gravy.
Nice post Michael.
I agree to start with PPC too. You will quickly learn some of the important aspects of converting visitors.
I also believe in having a well rounded strategy too. SEO is nice if you don't have money for PPC.
If you have to use SEO, like I currently do, don't wait for rankings... Have a system.
Build a site, get some links or whatever you want to do for off page stuff, and then start on your next site. Do this properly and you will make some money. By the time your first site ranks, you will already have a good number of sites done, and you won't have sat around for the first one to rank.
Thoughts?
C.K.
[edit] Sigh...I think it is time to go to bed...Those misspellings.. [/edit]
Good addition Trust, looking back at my post makes me think that you are closer to the mark.
Doing whatever works for you is the smart thing to do. It may be thru PPC or SEO or both. No 2 people really take the same path to success in Affiliate Marketing - They may be similar paths, but they are different.
Either way, I think it important to have a well rounded knowledge base. That means using SEO and PPC for success. If you are making a killing in PPC, why not take some time and learn some SEO and try that out? It can only help, and you will have one more skillset.
All the Best,
C.K.
At least with SEO, it doesn't cost anything to test things out.
It does, usually, cost time. You made some great points, but I just thought I'd point that out, since I believe it is rather important.
With PPC, the costs are high and there is a lot of competition. You get very fast results, but you're basically in an arbitrage situation and your profits will be continually squeezed as competition increases.
With SEO, it can be very slow and fickle. Most people have been affected at one time or another by a Google update. The "sandbox" makes it dificult with new sites. It can be great for a while and then completely disappear. That's no way to run a business.
Organic traffic is the missing ingredient. When you build a truly useful site that fills a specific need that hasn't been adequately addressed before, you get the best of both worlds. You can get fast results for almost nothing. You get repeat traffic. You get unsolicited free links. You get press, blog, and forum mentions.
One excellent example of this is Skunker's post [webmasterworld.com]. His new site grew to 1 million page views within the first month and is going to hit 2-3 million page views within the second month. I've looked at his site, and it's virtually all organic traffic. He built something that filled a unique niche that nobody (as far as I know) had ever addressed. It appears to have grown entirely by organic methods rather than PPC or SEO. His site has no PR, no backlinks showing in Google, and is I don't see any AdWords ads (from anyone) with some obvious keywords.
As an interesting question, has anyone else achieved 1m+ page views thorugh these "pure organic" methods. No linking, no SEO, no PPC?
I also think his post makes my point even more relevant - he has loads of traffic and no money, in fact his last post is that his Adsense earnings just dropped 70%. Perhaps he should have considered how to make money before publishing? :)
There are definitely ways he can monetize his site. I sent him a list of suggestions of relevant affiliate programs/products that should convert well on his site.
As for other successful sites that had largely organic traffic, look at any of the big ones: Ebay, Yahoo, Amazon, Google. They all grew largely with organic traffic.
Three of my sites grew largely through organic methods and have remained successful for long periods of time. A fourth grew entirely SEO and then collapsed.
I'm not saying you shouldn't do SEO and PPC, just that the organic aspect shouldn't be overlooked.
[edited by: MovingOnUp at 3:42 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2005]
I'd be delighted to learn something here, so my question is this - how does one generate 1m+ page views without SEO or PPC?
You don't want to dump a bunch of either time or money into something that you are not sure of.
Some have a talent for picking a niche, are "sure" from the beginning, and execute a successful startup... but it is rare.
I think of PPC as market research: start with some assumptions about your sales cycle, set a budget, get a feel for the PPC response, learn something. Stop, re-evaluate based on your new knowledge and make a decision to continue, modify, or abandon it. Move on to the next stage with a slightly larger investment and more knowledge.
So what is organic if it's not SEO or PPC? How does it work? I'd be delighted to learn something here, so my question is this - how does one generate 1m+ page views without SEO or PPC?
It's building a site that is so unique and/or useful that your core audience will tell their friends, post about it in blogs and/or forums, and come back regularly. It's usually very specialized and authoritative.
I thought of another organic example: Jib Jab. Obviously, not one that can be monetized as well as a product-oriented site, but I'm sure they've made plenty.
WebmasterWorld.com is another great example.
Maybe I will try PPC later, but currently I don't have the time to become absorbed in it.
One of problems of PPC I think about is your cashflow. If you get a low ROI (return on invest) then you'll need to spend a lot of money each day to make profit.
If you want to make $100 a day and your average ROI is 25% then you'll need to spend $400 each day. So you need to invest $12,000 a month to generate $100 a day!
Another problem for indivuals is that you need to spend cash first and will only receive your profits more than a month later. And there is always a (small) chance that your affiliate won't pay you..
But if you get higher ROIs (which should be very possible I think?) then this is less a problem as you need to spend less to make the same amount.
If you have lots of free time but not much money (students, unemployed etc.), SEO is better than PPC.
If you have lots of money but not much free time (Mon-Fri, nine-to-six, overtime etc.), PPC is better than SEO.
If you are developing a website to make money and you have some money to invest, PPC is probably a good way to test viability, as Michael_Anthony suggests.
If you are developing a website as an enjoyable pursuit, using SEO rather than PPC means you won't be spending money on it, so if it turns out not to be a money-spinner, it really doesn't matter, because you haven't spent much money on it in the first place.
If you have loads of traffic, just sell advertising. I know a blog that gets some great traffic that makes $5,000 - $7,000 a month just on 2 advertising slots. He makes money other ways on top of that with the blog. He might make a paragraph post a day, a few links out and thats it. Got loads of traffic, sell advertising. Plenty of people out there willing to spend for some eyeballs.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the best idea to start with is one that makes money online. Then if you get lucky and hit those huge visitor numbers, the revenue's guaranteed.
The logic of building a site, gettting loads of trafffic and THEN wondering how to monetize it just doesn't add up. I would suggest that it would be beter to start with the question "how can this make me money?" before building a site.
Come to think of it, apart from the web, how many other businesses get started without some kind of plan to make money? Even online, surely this example is the exception to the rule.
Then if you get lucky and hit those huge visitor numbers
But that's the whole problem. You don't get huge visitor numbers by getting lucky. You get huge numbers of visitors when you build a truly useful site.
The trash that most people put out there now is basically just search engine spam. It'll get traffic for a while with good SEO, or you can pay for it with PPC, but it's not something people will bookmark, tell their friends about, or usually even find remotely useful.
The logic of building a site, gettting loads of trafffic and THEN wondering how to monetize it just doesn't add up. I would suggest that it would be beter to start with the question "how can this make me money?" before building a site.
I agree that it should be an important question, but it needs to be paired with this even more important question: "How can this site be useful and essential to my target group?"
Most of the best sites out there started out when the webmaster said "I wish I could find a site to [fill_in_the_blank]" then built a site when they couldn't find one that did what they wanted. Monetizing the site is often an afterthought, but it doesn't need to be.
Both has its merits & demerits.
Technical Analysis vs Fundamental Analysis, the debate goes on ..
But like the late Chinese leader, Deng Xiao Ping said :
"It does not matter if it is black cat or a white cat. The cat that is able to catch mice is a good cat"
That's a rough translation
The logic of building a site, gettting loads of trafffic and THEN wondering how to monetize it just doesn't add up.
It did for heaps of sites... That is more or less Google's business model for their side projects ( news, orkut, etc ) from what they were saying in their investors webcast anyway.
You can't tell if a site would monetize properly from 100 or 1000 etc clicks, depending on your revenue plan. Some sites you need a critical mass of users. E.g. how useful would friendster, orkut, meetup, WebmasterWorld be with 1000 visitors? Of course these are more than just 'simple' websites.
If you're going to make made-for-adsense/made-for-affiliate simple content driven sites then yeah, I guess testing with ppc would work.
Any site can be monetized, but the degree to which they can be monetized varies. One way to look at the monetization of a site would be the number of unique visitors per day times the earnings that you make from each visitor.
You can guess as to how many visitors you'll be able to get per day and how much you'll earn for each one, but you won't know for sure until you build the site.
Look at several examples:
Example 1. Let's assume you're selling a very, very high end item with a huge commission. Let's say it's a $1000 commission. Conversions are lower on items like that, so let's assume you're able to convert 0.5% of your visitors. That means each visitor is worth $5 to you. You'll need 200 visitors to make a single sale. Because of the high price of the item, there's very little market for it. Let's assume you're able to get 100 visitors a day. You'll never get a million visitors a day, because there just isn't that much demand for the product. Still, from 100 visitors per day, that site could earn $500 per day.
Example 2. Let's assume you're selling a very low-end "impulse buy" item with an unbeatable price and decent commissions. Conversions may be as high as 10%. Assuming a $0.50 commission per sale or lead, you'll make a nickel out of each visitor. Obviously you can't use PPC to promote this site because you can't earn enough to covert the PPC costs and still make a profit. Here, you rely on SEO and organic traffic. Let's say you're able to build the traffic up to 10,000 unique visitors per day. At $0.05 each, that's a $500 per day profit.
Example 3. Let's assume you're building a really high traffic content site that grows by organic means only. You have no real monetization plans when you build the site, but the traffic is phenomenal. Let's say you get 100,000 visitors per day who view 10 pages each. Look for different ways to monetize this. Try AdSense. Try CPA offers. Try banner networks. Try targeted affiliate offers. If you can find things that earn even $0.50 CPM, you're going to earn $500 per day. That's only half a penny per visitor, but the huge amount of traffic makes up for it.
The bottom line is that there are ways to monetize virtually any site. The key is determining how much profit you're able to earn out of each visitor and how much traffic you'll be able to get.
On the earnings/visitor end, it largely depends on how well targeted the site concept is around a particular item or type of items, how well it converts, and what commissions you earn. The more general and non-commercial a site is, the smaller that earnings/visitor will be.
On the traffic end, it depends on how big the market is, how saturated it is, and how unique and useful your site is. Assuming your earnings/visitor is high enough, PPC can be a good method of building traffic. SEO can work as well, but is slow. Organic traffic growth only occurs with truly useful sites (like Webmasterworld.com--one of my favorite examples). You can get some huge growth and unbelievable traffic from organic methods, and it works in areas where PPC doesn't (due to low earnings/visitor).
I think that's good advice specifically for a product site.
If you're building a content site, I'm not sure you can do that. You'll only really get popular once you've got enough of a following - and you only get that from mountains of content (essentially the SEO part).
Organic traffic is the missing ingredient. When you build a truly useful site that fills a specific need that hasn't been adequately addressed before, you get the best of both worlds. You can get fast results for almost nothing. You get repeat traffic. You get unsolicited free links. You get press, blog, and forum mentions.
That approach has certainly worked for me. It took a while, though. Creating a large body of real, human-written and edited content isn't something you can do overnight, and experimentation is required to find what will generate income. ("Monetizing" content has become quite a bit easier in the AdSense era, of course, but for some topics, affiliate links offer even more potential--and the tough part is finding which affiliate programs and linking approaches work best.)
For what it's worth, my site is completely "organic," with virtually no SEO except for very basic things like descriptive page titles and headlines. (I don't even troll for links, mostly because I dislike link exchanges for PR's sake and hate asking people for favors.)
In a nutshell: An "organic" content site can be very profitable, but it isn't a way to get rich quick. It's for people who identify with the tortoise when they read THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE. :-)
