Should I become an Affiliate?

Well, that really dpeends on yourself.

The first and most important quesiton I think you should ask is, do I want to spend my time looking at the computer. Because that's what you do in Affiliate Marketing...

Secondly, the quesiton becomes do I want to spend my time keeping up with the trends in Internet Marketing. If not, then the chances are, no, you don't want to become an affiliate marketer. At least, not full time. If you already have a site and are generating lots of traffic, then sure, get into it. It won't hurt your site too much especially if it's a hobby site. On the other hand, if you make your living off your site (e.g. it's a company website), then perhaps it might not be such a good idea. Look at your objective for your company website in this case.

Thirdly, do you want or know any HTML? If you don't, you'll need to learn the basics of it. If not more to get really good. If you aren't willing to learn, don't bother.

Lastly, are you patient? And willing to keep working on something that you won't see results for for about... ooh... 6 months? Maybe less if you have the money to spend on pay per click. But if you don't have the funds or are not willing to put it forth, then... well, it's a long wait. Do you have the staying power?

Realise that Affiliate marketing full time works for a very small number of people. And most of those don't make millions of dollars. They might make a comfortable living, but they are not the bill gates of this world.

So... something to think about.

Interesting link

Just an interesting link

http://www.adbility.com/

Search Engine positioning

A few points that I'll highlight quickly.

Firstly, the search engines take a while to find and index any site. Normal time frame would be between 6-8 weeks for the first time round. It can take up to 3-6 months for your site to even rank anywhere (Google does a thing called sandboxing where they stick you aside for a long time).

The basic principle of a search engine is that they are looking for the most relevant page for the user. The better they do that, the more likely peoplew ill use them, making them more viable to others advertising on their services/etc. So always remember, the basic principle of a search engine is to make the best possible choice.

To do that, in general, they look for sites with good (and a lot) of content for a specific keyword (e.g. a webpage talking about cars should always rank better than one about car fishing if you type "car" in). So as an Affiliate, if you wanted to join a company selling cosmetics, you would for example write about cosmetics in great detail.

Now, most search engines work a principle of counting the keywords and finding a ratio of it to the actual words on a page. The higher the ratio, in general the better. Of course, a page saying nothing but "cars" would be unacceptable since it has nothing of importance to a reader. So there is supposedly a cut off point. What the cut off point is, and how it is calculated - well.. that's a point for the search engines to hide.

It's always best to generate real content when creating an Affiliate page. That way, if someone physically eyeballs a page, they realise it is a true page and not a spam one. Of course, again, that content should be of some relevance.

Still, if there are a lot of page sout there with the same % of words and same form, how do you differentiate them? Google uses what they call "Page Rank". This is based off a combination of the incoming links and the content.

In general, the idea is simple. The more content on that page, the more useful it is, the more likely people will link to it. So a page that a lot of links coming in is considered more important than a page with no links coming in even if they both have the same content.

Alright. Basics up there. For more info, check out searchengineworld.com or webmasterworld.com

Afiiliate Marketing 2

So, from the previous explanation, it seems pretty clear that the most important thing is to get traffic - and purchasing or clicking traffic - to your site.

There are a few ways to do so that are most common.

1) Organic Search Engine positioning
2) E-mail marketing
3) Advertising (including banners adv and Pay Per Click on Search Engines).

Now, each of these have their advantages and disadvantages. Search Engine Positioning is likely the cheapest way,but requires a lot of knowledge about how to manage your pages, the scripts, the keywords you go after and a constant amount of updating. Also, don't forget that any search engine positioning is prone to change and takes TIME!

E-mail marketing is dependent on getting a list. And of hitting enough people who are relevant enough. Also, there's a whole bunch of spam laws these days, so sometimes, this might not work that well. Something to always consider - the legaility of what you are doing. Again, if you can grow that list internally, you can control it. Purchasing al ist from an outside source can be difficult and potentialy dangerous legally. Don't forget, anything you send out there on a page affects how people see you.

Advertising - probably the fastest method of getting traffic to your site. The only problem being, advertising costs money. There are a few methods - search engine advertising and banners. Obviously, advertising varies in price depending on where and who. Rule of thumb - the more people who go there, the more expensive it'll be.

A few good places I've found thus far are : www.adbrite.com and www.blogads.com

I like both because they charge on a monthly basis and sometimes, you can find really good deals there. If you find one, lock it in for a few months because the chances are, the prices will rise.

Alright, basic 101 on getting traffic in. I'll talk more about Search Engine Optimisation in the next post.

So what is an Affiliate?

Good question. Considering I ask what Affiliate Marketing is when I hire, I guess I should do some explaining too.

Affiliate Marketing is the process in which you work with Affiliates to increase your reach on the web. It is an agreement between yourself and the Affiliate - for sending them traffic (and in most cases, sales), they (the website) agrees to pay you a set amount.

So what's the difference between AM and advertising online? With advertising, you are paying most often for a certain set of impressions or a time period of advertising on a site. In Affiliate Marketing, there's no up front cost to you - the affiliate places the adv (text, banner, article/etc) on their site and you only pay for what comes through.

Sounds great! What's the drawbacks?

Well... it can be hard to find good affiliates. It can be difficult to convert traffic that's going through. It can also get very expensive, very fast. If an affiliate sends say, 1,000 sales through and you are paying 10% off your sale... that's $10,000 you've lost.

Obviously, the last is unlikely, but as you often pay a % of your order, it can be detrimental. Also, more and more often, the Affiliate Market is going to long term customers - i.e. the Affiliate gets paid for every order a referred customer makes. So even if the customer makes 10 orders, the affiliate still gets a % of that. Which is something you would not have to do with a normal advertisement. Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) then is lower for affiliate referrals.

Alright, Affiliate Marketing 101 done. I'll get back to this a bit later.

Changing the template

Well, that was slightly harder than I thought it would be.

Definintely need to start reading more CSS code in my spare time. This stuff looks complicated. Still, the Help Section on Blogger is pretty useful.

So now I've got an Amazon link on the left.

Now, if I add say Google Adsense I hit the maximum number of actual advertising links that I'd want on this site.

Checking around at the other two places I was looking at (and Fastclick obviously), they are obviously not thrilled with the idea of blogs. At least, blogs not under their own domain.

And of course, they want a certain number of traffic.

So Google Adsense that does CPC of course is the other option. Hmmm... curiouser and curioser. This Affiliate business looks to be more difficult than first imagined to make money on a full time basis.

Neverwhere

Let's see how this looks and how it works.

Neverwhere - Gaiman's first book and definitely to my way of seeing things, his best thus far. While not as lauded as some others, it showcases some of the things that make him great - a world that lives and breathes after you close the book.

Amazon sign up

Alright, signing up to Amazon. I'm going to grab a link from there, see if it works.

If it does, might grab from another affiliate network I've found called Clickxchange (http://www.clickxchange.com) or maybe Casale Media (http://casalemedia.com).

They both seem to have good reviews and look interesting.

Anyway, waiting to be spidered.

My first post

This is really interesting. Looking really at the fact that somehow, one blog got a PR rating. Not certain if it's because it was hosted at a different location or not. If it is not, then this could be an avenue for creating multiple sites fast... and then hitting them up for keywords.