The truth about affiliate marketing for review based sites:
I have embarked on this area for quite some time and have set sites up in various niches, following best practices and sound research prior to buying domain names and setting out on the plainly dull task of creating a number of sites that you possibly do not give a flying shit about.
Here is my process and findings about doing this for a living, and more importantly, what it means to me to do this for a living, and perhaps you?
A sucker born every minute!
I firmly believe I do not fall into the realm of sucker in life, yes I have made mistakes, though I regret none, although once I did buy a totally crap watch from a dodgy asshole in a motorway service station while the police were about to arrest him for selling said dodgy watches, one of my largest idiot mistakes.
But that example of stupidity actually has some merit in explaining a main principle behind affiliate marketing.
Catching primed people that are prepared to part with their cash.
See, I just simply had it in my head that day that I needed and wanted a nice watch, this guy with his boot (trunk) open had some lovely looking (total shite) watches and engaged me.
As I had spare cash on me I was perfect, he intercepted me in the right frame of mind (unbeknownst to him) and he got a sale, I am sure he does this more times than not and gets a polite fuck off though.
Well done dodgy geezer…lesson learned?
This is a big part of affiliate marketing; you are acting as a middle man in the process of an exchange of goods or services, my mum always said that the middle man makes the money but I still do not fully understand what that means, apart from if you do it right its easier than providing the actual service usually, and you get paid for it if you make a sale.
Ways of getting yourself in front of others who are looking to spend:
1, Paid search results
2, Organic results from search
3, Forum message leaving
4, Blog posting
5, Article writing
6, PR with companies like newspapers
7, Traditional advertising
8, Viral/Social networking
Once you have eyeballs and people visiting:
Right well done, you have followed tried and tested means of getting traffic to your site, now its time to convert people into making you some commissions from your site affiliate links.
So how do you go about making sure that people are going to click away from you and actually buy from the site they go to?
1, You need a good site layout that works for the user, meaning they do not have to think a great deal on what they are seeking, so if you are offering a review, give some posts to others on the first page and teaser text to other areas ideally with images incorporated, people love images, get them engaged quickly and comfortable with your sites layout and style, but keep it simple in all areas.
2, Work out a range of selling areas that you can offer. If they are not interested in one thing, perhaps you may catch their eye with another, this could be with contextual ads that you bring in such as adsense, or text links in posts or image links to products, or simple banners but be creative or very very specific dependent on your niche.
3, Do not try too hard to sell your wares, people are suspicious and very savvy, so unless you have drawn traffic because your site is the absolute font of all knowledge on a subject and has well written articles with some weight, the likelihood is you will look like you are selling and piss them off.
4, Offer a price comparison set of results for reviews and best offers, people still love to know they are getting a deal, we all do, and if it is genuine then you may well be onto a winner.
Warning, if you do this and do not use scripts that bring in regular data from merchants that is up to date you will be perceived as a scammer, when people go from your site to another through your affiliate link on the promise of those shoes at $100 and find them at $120, no sale for you most of the time!
Always be honest you are wasting your energy if you are looking to fool people.
5, If you are honest, people may well want to link to you and tell others so always have an easy option to social book mark yourself, I am unsure of the true benefits of social networking by and large, but the saying “every little helps” and “it cant hurt”, may well ring true.
A common thing that I have found with sites that I wanted to emulate (as I expected them to be creating good money), was that they had original content, this my friends is one of the main keys to getting Google to trust you while pushing you up the SERPS and also to make your readers feel that there is a human underneath all this, OK, to be honest, the sites I looked at and read were total garbage, which brings me onto the following point.
Is affiliate marketing for you?
So you have found that niche that has a good TLD available (see my previous post on TLD buying) and you have bought your .com, and said yes this niche will work, this is what you and others want to read about, and you love this area so much you can talk about it in depth.
Great. I hope you do, because for me, writing about things I am not that bothered about is like putting needles in my eye.
Yes I know exactly how to make money from doing this, and will offer many tips in coming posts.
But unless you really want to do it, may I suggest you take a week out without spending any cash on your business venture, and think about what taking an hour or more out of your day, to write dross articles would feel like if you had to write an article of around 400 pages on a subject that will help your sites fleshy content factor. Now times that by ten if you are looking to make any serious cash quickly, as many sites simply don’t make it in the beginning, and ask yourself:
Is 5- 10 hours a day of writing nonsense worth it?
For me?
On top of this I have a deep seated belief that I am a generally good person, and enjoy making peoples lives a little easier and more fulfilling if I can. No I do not preach often I assure you, apart from a small soap box that I sing on with the pigeons in the town centre on a Sunday morning, I am just like you, more than likely.
My point is, when you are with your friends and are asked what you do, does it feel right to say “you know what, I write utter nonsense in the hope that this utter nonsense will bring me some cash from people who do not realise that they are making me cash, and more than likely stumbled up on my online efforts as a result of decent optimization of a dull website”?
To which your nurse friend says, “oh I just save peoples lives.”
Sleeping soundly is a wonderful thing, and something that money cannot buy. Honest.
Tell me your thoughts on affiliate marketing in general, pretty please….