My fast and furious foray in to affiliate marketing

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WriteAndReview

Content Marketing Works!
Nov 8, 2010
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I'm a writer by trade. (www.writeandreview.com) But, lurking around these parts for the past month has given me the Urge. (And possibly a mild case of chlamydia.)

What is the Urge? It's the rumbling excitement one feels in his lower bowels as one begins to understand exactly what real internet marketing is and, one figures, "Hey. I can do that."

Of course, it's never as easy as that. After leafing through the digital archives of this place, I've concluded that this place, more than any other, is the place that can get you (me) pointed in the right direction.

It's like going through n00b boot camp.

So, in the spirit of the n00b, I'm going to detail my trip into the affiliate marketing world. I'll share what I do that works and what I do that doesn't and hopefully make a few friends along the way.

Here's what I'm working with so far:

Goal:
2 sites generating an avg. of $100 profit each per day within 120 days.

Platform:
Joomla

Affiliate sites:
Commission Junction, ClickBank

Ad network:
Google adsense (only 2 ads per site)

Domain names and niches:
Yeah, you'd like to know wouldn't you, jerk :nopenope:

E-mail/newsletter software:
AcyMailing for Joomla

I plan to post a status update every few days.

Next tasks:
1. Figure out what tracking software to use for stats. Hopefully ClickBank and CJ supply something here. I'll find out.
2. Generate content
2a. Determine whether pre-dating article timestamps is a no-no.
3. Submit sites to search engines
4. Find out what the hell Drip Feed Blast is and how it will help me reach my goals

- Matt
 


1. tracking202 is good and easy to figure out.
2. should be easy since that is what you do.
2a. maybe to someone with morals.
3. submit a sitemap, submit sites rss feed to feedlisting.com, shout out the url on identi.ca and you will be indexed and cached in no time.
4. dfb is an easy to use portal for getting xrumer type profile links. many people use this to gain juice to sites by filtering the high volume of lower quality DFB links through better 2.0 type sites or net type structures. builds links to your links to make your links better than your competitions links. Another good tool is backlinks genie which creates the upper part of a strong tiered linking system on its own for you. then you can fire dfb at what it makes. I have done dfb straight to sites but it usually sends them into a big long dance if they are brand new.
 
I recommend affiliate commission over adsense pages for you.

The cool thing about affiliate sales + PPC marketing is that you have very explicit variables to manage and is immediately accessible, from landing page to ad copy. Very modular with no substantial "ramp up". Instantly accessible.

On the other hand, sometimes you can wait a month just for a new website to get indexed. Talk about a bottleneck. You don't need to be indexed to send PPC traffic.
 
Otinsdale:
- Checked out Tracking 202. Looks like it's for PPC tracking. I might wait a bit on the PPC.
- feedlisting.com and identi.ca - awesome! thanks for those.
- thanks for the DFB and Backlinks Genie info.

Mahzkrieg:
-the PPC vs. indexing argument makes sense. I need to read and learn more about PPC. I'm going to give content marketing a shot while I do.
 
cocolove said:
The cool thing about affiliate sales + PPC marketing is that you have very explicit variables to manage and is immediately accessible, from landing page to ad copy. Very modular with no substantial "ramp up". Instantly accessible.
Click to expand...

Forum spammer. Copying other people's messages and posting links.
 
Hey WriteandReview - a lot of people forget about Instant Commission programs. You could add a few to your list. You've just got to remember to read the terms and conditions just like you would for any Clickbank or CJ promotion. Because in most cases you get paid 100% commission for every other sale.

Just something to think about...
 
I hadn't heard of Instant Commission. Someone above ref'd affiliate commission.

So - Instant Commission - it's not a company, right? Instant commission is a category. I see a company named PaySpree in this space. Is that what you're talking about?
 
Update:

I've worked with Joomla quite a bit for content management. Never really looked at the banner management system . . . OMG you guys! It is like, so great and stuff!

Just create a client, category and a new banner. Then copy in the vendor supplied HTML from CJ and away you go.

Joomla's banner system even captures the click count. I have total control over which banners get placed on which pages and how many times. Me likey. Me Likey long time.
 
I use 202 for my seo pages. I'm a fan of knowing what search terms are getting to my page and which terms are converting. ppc and seo are not mutually exclusive. once buying season comes back for certain niches then I will have a better idea of what terms convert and which don't which will save me money on ppc bids in the long run.
 
One of my goals was to find a good analytics reporting tool. On Otinsdale's recommendation, I' checked out 202. Good stuff.

I also (today) stumbled across a new beta feature of Google Analytics. It's called In-Page Analytics. It's part of the BI dashboard and it actually gives you the breakdown of which elements on your pages are getting clicked. Nice!
 
I just took a closer look at Google's In-Page Analytics for my writeandreview.com website and it looks like the click stats are link based and not page/screen real estate based.

Originally, I thought it reported on the latter -- more like a usability study tool -- it doesn't. Looks like all page elements that contain the same underlying link are grouped for stats.

Still pretty valuable.

Something else that In-Page Analytics may be useful for -- allowing me to click around my website without impacting the stats.
 
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