All this Affiliate stuff...

[deronsizemore]

Can anyone shed some light on all of this affiliate stuff for this newbie? I read alot of blogs of the big earners, and see alot of the big names on forums talking about affiliate marketing, etc. I can remember reading Jon's SP post about his earnings and thinking "holy shit! How could I get started?"

Although I think I kinda understand the whole affiliate thing...I don't fully.

I mean, I'm curious as to what everyone making a load of cash does? Do you design some kind of content site, sign up for Azoogle's services and see if they offer any affiliates in your niche and then just advertise the hell out of your site? Do you sign up for an affiliate at Azoogle for something like, ringtones, make some kind of a simple landing page and then advertise the hell out of it and hope people sign up for the ringtones to you get your commission?

From what I have read, it seems like affiliate marketing is the way to go as far as making the mega bucks, but I'm just new to all this, so I could be way off base. If someone would fill in the gaps for me I'd appreciate it.

 

[Andrew]

From what I've observed and experienced myself, it has a lot to do with PPC. Once you see what keywords send the most traffic and convert the best for PPC it allows you to very effectively build and SEO a static site for those terms.

 

[deronsizemore]

So where does Azoogle and CJ come into play? Don't they offer different affiliates where once visitors sign up for the service or buy something you get commission?

 

[Dave]

Azoogle and CJ give you access to hundreds of affiliates, instead of having to go to each company and signing up for hundreds of different accounts. they also offer a ton of stats tracking etc.

 

[deronsizemore]

Okay, so if what I understand is true (please correct me if I'm not), PPC can be utilized to see which keyword terms send the most traffic and convert the best, so then you can SEO your site to the fullest using those terms that you got from your experiments with PPC, and then once your site ranks high in the search engines, that's when the affiliates come into play, because the more traffic the better chance of converting on the affiliate offers? Is that about right?

 

[paowiee]

yes that's about right, although affiliates already come into play while you're doing PPC.

I have 2 campaigns that are directly linked to the merchant site, I don't do as of the moment because i don't have that much time

 

[dreamedia]

Okay, so if what I understand is true (please correct me if I'm not), PPC can be utilized to see which keyword terms send the most traffic and convert the best, so then you can SEO your site to the fullest using those terms that you got from your experiments with PPC, and then once your site ranks high in the search engines, that's when the affiliates come into play, because the more traffic the better chance of converting on the affiliate offers? Is that about right?

Yep, thats right. Don't assume, just test & track before you build. You need to discover traffic that converts/buys. Rinse & repeat.

 

[paowiee]

Yup I second that,

Although you may think it's a hassle, it actually will help you weed out those useless keywords. My 2 campaigns became extremely profitable and had a higher CTR once I determined which keywords were typed to look for info rather than to buy.

 

[deronsizemore]

Yep, thats right. Don't assume, just test & track before you build. You need to discover traffic that converts/buys. Rinse & repeat.

So, I'm in the process of building a content site right now, how do you suggest I test and track "before you build"? Or were you refering to something else? If the site isn't up how can I track and test?

Thanks

 

[dreamedia]

Okay, so if what I understand is true (please correct me if I'm not), PPC can be utilized to see which keyword terms send the most traffic and convert the best, so then you can SEO your site to the fullest using those terms that you got from your experiments with PPC

The above is the basics of doing good research. In addition, its no use testing a keyword/s with PPC if the SERPs for that keyword are beyond your SEO ability & budget. Its a game of balance between your SEO ability, SERPs competition & possible $$$ return from investment of time & money to get good traffic.

The reality is that its going to take 6 to 12months of actually doing stuff before you really understand it. If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it will stick.

 

[CoRegisteer.com]

One option would be to test the actual landing page of the offer. So, for example, a ringtone offer, send the traffic directly to the landing page of the offer (this is easier if you pick niche keywords). If the offer is converting for you, then spend the time to create your own landing pages.

You can also set it up so the keyword is passed through as the subid of the landing page url. This way, you can figure out which keywords are working for you, and focus on those keywords to get your postitive ROI.

Azoogle is a great CPA network to sign up to, but there are many other CPA networks out there (www.Affiliateer.com is one that somes to mind ), and sometimes the smaller ones give you more personalized treatment as well as a higher payout to get and keep your business

 

[deronsizemore]

The reality is that its going to take 6 to 12months of actually doing stuff before you really understand it. If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it will stick.

Ha Ha...I love that quote. Yeah I'm finding this out right now. I feel so overwhelmed, like I don't know where to begin with all this marketing and money making stuff, but then I tell myself to get my damn site up first and then worry about it. I have a design, but absolutely no content yet, so first things first. I tend to get excited and get ahead of myself. I guess it's like everything else, you can't expect to just know it. It takes work. At first glance when I started with CSS I was so overwhelmed like I would never get it, but after a few months of playing around with it I could wrap my head around the concepts, and I assume this is the same.

 

[deronsizemore]

One option would be to test the actual landing page of the offer. So, for example, a ringtone offer, send the traffic directly to the landing page of the offer (this is easier if you pick niche keywords). If the offer is converting for you, then spend the time to create your own landing pages.


You can also set it up so the keyword is passed through as the subid of the landing page url. This way, you can figure out which keywords are working for you, and focus on those keywords to get your postitive ROI.

Thanks for the reply. So, maybe I'm confused on a couple other things as well? First, as far as landing pages go, are they something that the publisher has to design, or does say Azoogle or whoever give you options for the landing page based on the specific offer? You said I could take users to the landing page of the offer and if it's converting then create my own landing pages, so I didn't know.

So why would someone want to use a landing page rather than just place offers relating to their niche in their content sites? I read all the time that with landing pages you can guage which offers are converting, but how can you tell which ones are converting better that way opposed to just having the offers in a content site?

You can also set it up so the keyword is passed through as the subid of the landing page url. This way, you can figure out which keywords are working for you, and focus on those keywords to get your postitive ROI.

What does passing through as the "subid" mean and how do the keywords work? I mean do you just set up a PPC campaign using something like AdWords and then in your ad which shows up on publishers sites through AdSense do you just use certain keywords? Like example if I were offering Ringtones, I might have a small ad that reads "Free 50 Cent Ringtones" and a link to my site/landing page, where my keywords are "Free", "50 cent", and "Ringtones". So I can leave those up in the ad for a day or whatever and see how many people are coming to my landing page/site and see how is buying the offer, if I don't like it, maybe I change "50 Cent" to "Nelly" or whatever, and try that keyword? Is that how it works?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Rob_TID]

The problem is that people confuse the terminology.

Merchant - a site that sells something (eg. tid.com.au - one of the sites I help mange)

Network - a company that provides online tracking for an affiliate program and has a list of both merchants and affiliates - eg CJ.com

Affiliate - person who promotes the Merchant's product and collects a commission.

 

[deronsizemore]

The problem is that people confuse the terminology.

Merchant - a site that sells something (eg. tid.com.au - one of the sites I help mange)

Network - a company that provides online tracking for an affiliate program and has a list of both merchants and affiliates - eg CJ.com

Affiliate - person who promotes the Merchant's product and collects a commission.

Yeah, that clears up some confusion for me. I think I've been referring to CJ as an Affiliate. So since you said that a "Network provides online tracking for an affiliate....." can you actually set everything up to be an affiliate through CJ, or do they just put you in contact with merchants and you set everything up through their site? Also, why would a Network (eg: CJ.com) have a list of affiliates? Wouldn't they just list the merchants, the people with something to sell?

 

[CoRegisteer.com]

To clear up more confusion -

Merchants landing page (aka Offer landing page)- the page supplied by the advertiser (usually one landing page per offer) that the end user would reach before they convert to a a sale or a lead.

Affilaite's Landing page (or the content site itself) - the page created by the affiliate that the end user would reach before they get to the Merchant's Landing page.

So why would someone want to use a landing page rather than just place offers relating to their niche in their content sites?

You are right. With a content site, you can have the link to the offer going directly to the Merchants Landing page.

If you are promoting merchants offers via Pay per click, affiliates often make a "Affiliate's" landing page.

What does passing through as the "subid" mean and how do the keywords work? Like example if I were offering Ringtones, I might have a small ad that reads "Free 50 Cent Ringtones" and a link to my site/landing page, where my keywords are "Free", "50 cent", and "Ringtones". So I can leave those up in the ad for a day or whatever and see how many people are coming to my landing page/site and see how is buying the offer, if I don't like it, maybe I change "50 Cent" to "Nelly" or whatever, and try that keyword? Is that how it works?

What some networks, including ours, allow affilaites to do is to add the keyword used to the end of the url. For example, if you used 2 keywords, you could have 2 urls, one for each keyword as follows http://www.affiliateer.com/member.asp?afid=10038&offerid=519&si=Free50centringtones and http://www.affiliateer.com/member.asp?afid=10038&offerid=519&si=freenellyringtones In these urls, "si" stands for subid. So, when you check your stats and see that you have generated leads, you may see that you got 10 leads from subid "free50centringtones" and only 1 from subid "freenellyringtones". So now you know which keyword is working better for you, and how much money you can spend on that keyword (your revenue earned / number of clicks should tell you how much you can go upto without losing money)

Hope this helps