Online Affiliate Marketing Plan - my checklist for more efficient affiliate sites!

Note: this is a free article. I don’t sell information here!

I have six “affiliate sites”. Two of them work pretty well, but they could work better (and those that don’t work  should). These past few weeks I concentrated on sorting out what works, what doesn’t and why, so as to put together a reliable affiliate site “blueprint” that I could follow to enhance performance of those I have and create better ones in the future.

This page is my blueprint, and I am very excited about it. There are a few things here that I am quite sure you never read elsewhere. Things I never thought of doing before I finally sat down and decided to thoroughly study and build a real method.

1. Be found by people looking for solutions to a problem.
  – keyword targetting, 5-10 page website, on-site SEO, off-site SEO (quick backlinking strategy).
2. Give them a solution to their problem.
3. Offer a product they will need to apply the solution (affiliate program, dropship product).
4. Apply a checklist of conversion strategies.

It should be very much worth ten minutes of your time. That being said, I cannot make any guarantees concerning anyone’s future earnings. Creating affiliate sites requires skills that you may or may not have. In short, for legal reasons, I am making it clear that I do not accept responsibility for your actions, which I am sure most people will understand.

This affiliate marketing plan lies on a rather unconventional principle. Most affiliates either send prospects directly to the product site or has them land on a page that describes the product and recommends it. Some cheat by attracting readers with page titles or ads that read – “Is product X a scam?” and then go about telling how, after all, it isn’t and presenting a recommendation and affiliate link.

I believe most people are smarter than that, and catch the “trick”.

The typical affiliate marketing approach

 (not recommended)

- prospect has a problem and looks for a solution.
- The affiliate presents a solution to the problem that is in direct competition with all the other affiliates and all the competing products (and their affiliates). Advertising costs a fortune due to competition.
- The prospect clicks through one of the offers, comes back to his search results, tries another…
- Conversion rates are very low (well below 1%) and profitability is generally negative.

The fake review affiliate marketing approach

 (not recommended)

- prospect has already checked out the product offer.
- prospect has doubts so he looks for an online review of the product.
- prospect sees something like “is product X a scam?”, or worse, “product X is a scam!!”
- prospect reads how product X is a scam to some, but is in fact not a scam at all, but really recommended. He spots the affiliate link (they’ve been around long enough, people know what they are).
- prospect doesn’t trust the review, and goes off to look for another one or
- prospect decides to buy, but despises the approach and does whatever he can to circumvent the affiliate link (like returning to the site on his own, he already knows where it is) or
- prospect is disgusted and goes for a different product, or no product at all (most likely).
- conversion rates are very low (well below 1%).

My Preferred Approach

Give people the solution they are looking for, and offer a product they will need to apply it.

Instead of acting as a gateway to the product offer, this approach gives added value to the prospect. They are better armed to reach their goal, more motivated to go through with it and therefore more likely to need some tools. Your benefit comes from selling one or more of those necessary tools and earn a commission.

Tools can be further information, a membership for support, a hard good… anything that will help the prospect use your content to reach his goal. The more that tool is required, the more likely the reader is to buy it. If it is perceived as “nice to have” but unnecessary, web copy will need to be more convincing.

I believe my approach is a better “funnel” than the other two. For one thing, it isn’t deceitful. Most people won’t buy, and they go away with a positive experience. It contributes. And some do buy and make you money. They go off with a positive experience and an exciting project. In both cases, the experience is positive.

You make money and get to boost your karma in the process!

Finding a product to sell for a commission.

Most people look for products with high conversion rates / payouts and work from there. I prefer:

- make a list of things you know enough about to teach people something valuable (or would like to learn about and be willing to do the research).
- alongside each item on the list, add what kind of product or service they will need to apply what you will teach them.
- look for such products and services online, and find good quality with an affiliate program (or drop-shipping program – more on that below) that give you a reasonably high payout.

I believe you have a much more potent selling combination than with the previous approach.

Affiliate Marketing Plan Implementation

1. What do I know enough about (or would like to learn about) to write a 5-15 page tutorial?

2. What tools are required to apply my tutorial?

3. Which of these tools can sold online with a sizeable commission through:

a. an affiliate program
b. a drop-shipping company (more on that below)
c. my reader isn’t likely to already have one (depending on how he formulated his search)
d. my reader is preferably not a complete beginner (most beginners simply don’t start, while people with some experience are more likely to want to improve and act on your recommendations).

4. Use the Google keyword tool to determine the keyphrase you will base your site on. Make a shortlist of potential 2-4 word keyphrases. (Don’t necessarily rely on keyword suggestions after entering popular keywords though. Too many people may be getting those same suggestions!)

5. Check the competition by searching the keyphrase on Google. If the ten pages (the actual pages, not the site’s front page) that appear on the first page result have a PR2 or above, the competition to get on page 1 is likely to be too fierce. Try the next phrase on your list. (How to determine PR below).

6. Once you’ve found your keyphrase, write your tutorial and put it online while being careful to follow basic seo rules:

a. Put your keyphrase in page titles.
b. Put your keyphrase in title, subtitle (headings 1-4), bold, and italics tags.
c. Use your keyphrase at the beginning and end of each page.
d. Use the words in the keyphrase as link anchors between pages.
e. Do as much of the above as you can while staying readable by humans.
f. Using Wordpress makes the process easier (especially the content publishing and inter-linking).
g. Using Hostgator allows you to host unlimited websites with one account (the only extra cost per new domain is a $10 a year registration fee). This seriously cuts down on costs.

7. A website with good on-site SEO isn’t enough for good rankings. You need off-site SEO as well (dofollow backlinks with your keywords or keyphrase in the anchor text – more on that in the resource section below).

Writing a good tutorial may require a couple days of work. Putting it online (following the conversion checklist below) should require another couple hours. Then getting backlinks will require about an hour more, and an extra page. Once set, little maintenance or monitoring is required. It is pretty much “set and forget”.

If your site doesn’t make it to page 1 after a few weeks, you will need either more backlinks or more content. Don’t be too ambitious to prevent this (don’t choose keywords that are too competitive). I believe from experience that it is more profitable to build a small new site than it is to struggle getting one site to break through on overly competitive keywords.

Increasing Affiliate Marketing Conversions

Getting many people to read your affiliate offer is the most difficult part of affiliate marketing. With the above procedure, you should easily get 1000 people a month to view your offer, which should be enough to convert into a few monthly sales, or a couple dozen. At $30-50 commission per sale, an affiliate site can generate up to $1000 in commissions a month.

Keep in mind that the numbers aren’t high enough for statistics to be viable, so don’t expect consistent monthly revenue from each site. Think in terms of yearly revenue instead. 

Trying to go beyond that figure is, in my opinion, counter-productive. At this point, I think it is better to just make another, then another until it adds up to the desired level of revenue.

That being said, there are a few things to implement to quickly optimize an affiliate site’s performance.

Instead of concentrating on increasing readership, which, past a certain point,  requires a big time commitment, I find it much more productive to focus on increasing conversion.

1. Offer a bonus to those of your readers that buy through your affiliate links.

2. Automate the delivery of that bonus whenever possible (more on that below), so as to not have to be permanently available to manually send the bonus to new buyers.

3. Review the efficiency of your current content. Does it offer a solution to the problem the reader expressed when he did the search that led to your site? Does that solution require a product to be carried out better? Is your reader seeing both the offer and the solution?

4. Basic conversion principles (excerpt from doshdosh):

• Reviews by other users (found online, or on vendor’s website).
• Fast delivery (for digital, instant. For hard goods, overnight delivery  availability).
• Clear visibility of the offer, alongside (and/or woven into) the free value provided by the affiliate site.
• Scarcity (for hard goods, mention limited availability). This is one of the main drawbacks of digital goods. Scarcity claims aren’t credible as supply is unlimited (and the reader knows it).
• High value given for free (generally a solution to the problem expressed by the search).
• “Primal appeal” – all things relating to food, sex and danger.
• Limit choices (should only offer 1-3 products).
• Use the word “You”.
• Encourage visitors to make a commitment: ie - make public that they will solve their problem, or achieve the goal they set for themselves (thanks to your free content + product offer).
• Images of similarity – attractive people that fit your target market’s demographic profile.
• Tell a story your reader will want to identify with (usually related to the problem at hand).

5. Don’t spend TOO much time tweaking. Sometimes increasing revenue can be more simply achieved with a brand new site, rather than by trying to increase an existing site’s performance (and sometimes failing, or even getting the opposite effect).

Offering a great bonus serves two purposes. The first is obvious: extra incentive. The second is to decrease “leakage”, or:

- people using their own referral links and cutting you out of the picture.

They usually do that not knowing that it constitutes fraud, and can lead to confiscation of their earnings on just about all affiliate marketplaces out there.

- people seeing the offer at work and carrying out the purchase at home… (or vice-versa)

Pay Per Click Advertising

PPC is, as a general rule, not a part of this plan. It is difficult to run a profitable PPC campaign, and it requires constant monitoring.

That being said, as with all general rules, there can be exceptions. This depends on the keywords you target, and the conversion performance of your site. If the right conditions are met (low competition, good conversion, high payout per sale), then PPC can lead to increased performance.

But never consider PPC as a set-and-forget solution. Adwords requires monitoring (page score and cost per click can vary overnight), and other platforms provide little traffic on low demand keywords (as well as lower quality prospects that tend to bounce a lot more).

Note: As stated in the Adwords documentation, a successful campaign with good click-through rates and high page scores is beneficial for other campaigns. If you have one, the next campaign becomes easier to optimize. If you have several, even better.

Also keep in mind that traffic from PPC doesn’t behave the same way as traffic from organic traffic does. Most people know that they clicked on an advertisement. They come with their guard up.

Long-Term Benefits and Fun

The advantage of this method is that you can create as many new sites as you like, that gradually increase your income with very low overhead cost ($10 a year for each new domain, $10 a month for hosting of all your domains, a couple tools to pick up along the way that cost under $100 and optionally membership to a wholesale dropship supplier).

Once set, an affiliate site that ranks on search engines continues to work for you with little to no maintenance (passive income).

With practice, each new site becomes better targeted and performs better than the previous. A lot of trial and error is necessary when you start out with no guidance. I hope this quick online affiliate marketing plan will cut out most of the learning curve for you.

Resources

Don’t miss my article on finding your passion. If this plan helps you find your passion and live it to the fullest, then my mission is accomplished There are also resources for health, fitness, creativity and more so be sure to look around!

The Google Toolbar allows you to determine a web page’s rank (PR from not ranked to 10) from Google’s point of view. This helps evaluate competition for keyphrases you are considering for a new site.

Hosting that allows unlimited websites for a fixed cost (I only recently discovered hostgator and have been paying about $90 a year for each domain! What a noob I will be transfering them gradually!) – affiliate link.

Free content publishing solution with good on-site SEO: Wordpress.

New FTC regulations governing paid recommendations (common sense practices such as disclosing the affiliate relationship, these regulations act in favor of protecting consumers).

Backlinking strategy and tools: see my previous article on dofollow backlinks (and how to get a few hundred easily). This is off-site SEO, the most important and most difficult. This resource should be enough for the successful implementation of this plan.

Automated Bonus Delivery (and customer list building) solution: This allows you to send a bonus email to people that buy from your Clickbank affiliate links (works only with Clickbank) – affiliate links.

Drop-shipping product sourcing: Drop shipping companies can be an interesting alternative (or complement) to affiliate programs by adding a wide range of hard good options (as opposed to digital / downloadable products or services). Hard goods have more perceived value. It is also much easier and more credible to act on the scarcity effect (only x left in stock!) whereas a digital product (or print on demand T-shirts) cannot be out of stock.

There is a list price, and you choose your price. The idea is to make the best possible profit margin while staying reasonable. This is often used to sell on Ebay. You can try, but a quick look on Ebay will show you that that is where all the competition is (driving prices and profit margins way down). Your own 1000 visit a month website with a goal of 20 sales a month (with a profit margin of ~$30-50) and optionally a digital product on the side seems more promising (but you can direct traffic directly to your ebay or amazon listing to use their transaction systems).

I just started using Dropshipdesign after careful consideration amongst a few others (studying their terms and conditions, reviews and pricing). Affiliate link.

Doba is only for US and Canada residents. From what I’ve read around their pricing is an issue (and therefore your potential profit margin).

Megagoods has a clause I think is dangerous – they reserve the right to have you prepay merchandise on account of your customer if they have doubts about fraud. Not being in any position at all to prevent fraud (much less than they are), being forced to take full risk on their behalf for products that can sell for $300 seems way too risky.

TradeTang and DhTrade seem to sell cracked games and software from China (among other things). My future plans in life don’t include any kind of stay in state penitentiaries (or equivalent) so thanks but no thanks.

Conclusion

I’ve done too much with too little method. This has seriously hindered my progress. Writing this blueprint gave me a process I needed to take my online affiliate ventures to the next level. Each new site will be more carefully planned, and existing sites either improved, salvaged or closed down.

A good affiliate site is like a great recipe. There are quite a few quality ingredients required, and just one missing ingredient takes away a lot of the “flavor”. The above checklist should help you make dishes that give great value to your future readers and retribute you with growing income!

I hope this helps you achieve your goals following a more direct route than mine

Don’t hesitate to leave comments or questions, I will answer them to the best of my ability!

Online Affiliate Marketing Plan is an article from: Creative Lab

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