I like to compare affiliate marketing to a rollercoaster ride. You have your highs and low’s. You will have your rushes and your disappointments. It can end up turning into a complete waste of time, or one of the most exhilarating rides you’ve taken. It reminds me of a time I was using affiliate marketing myself!
I believe it was a Saturday morning. I hadn’t been able to check my reports on my website for a couple of days. I had been so busy doing the daily activities of going to work and doing errands that I just didn’t get around to checking on my website. As you could probably imagine, I was a little anxious to see how my affiliate marketing had been coming along.
The first thing I checked was my website stats. I then moved to my affiliate commissions to see if I had made anything. To my surprise I hadn’t made a single commission. That was a little unusual for me at the time. I would’ve at least received a couple sales during that time period! It made me a little nervous considering that I was using ppc (pay per click) as my main source of traffic.
I hurried over to Google to check my account activity with them, and found that I had racked up a $100 bill for the keywords I had selected for my campaign. At this point I was very upset. I asked myself, “How could I have messed up?” I then decided to blame Google for ripping me off!
I think anybody who can relate to this experience knows that it isn’t Google’s fault for me not getting the sales that I felt they should have delivered me. I had made poor decisions on my keywords to target, hence, the big bill I had to pay Google with no commissions earned for my efforts.
Why I Don’t Use PPC For Affiliate Marketing
From this, and a few other experiences, I no longer use ppc for generating my traffic. It is a gambling game that you are sure to loose. There are tools available today that can help limit this from happening to you, but I don’t want to throw hundreds of dollars to Google to find the right keywords. I now use ppc as a testing ground for my website. I see how visitors react to my landing pages, how long they stay on my site, what other pages they go to, etc.
Using Organic Keywords For Affiliate Marketing
I have had a higher success rate with using seo (search engine optimization) for generating leads and traffic. This method is slower on getting results, but higher for return on investment. You need to think about it is a long term investment. If you are able to get your page listed organically for your targeted keywords, you are going to get free daily traffic and higher in-pocket net from your efforts. The great thing about organically targeting your keywords is that, it doesn’t cost you a penny!
How To Organically Target Your Keywords
The best way I have found to target your keywords is through writing content. If this doesn’t sound like a viable option to you, then STOP READING RIGHT NOW!! Search engines love to find highly relevant and targeted information for people that use their services. Search engines want people to come back to them. They are going to make every effort to display the most relevant information for the keywords that are typed in that search bar.
I hope you can see where this is going. Typing up an article of highly relevant and targeted content will help you get onto the first page of search results. Make the article informative. People are looking for information first. If you give them the information they are looking for, they will come back or even buy from you!
I want to make it clear that only using keyword targeted articles wont put your content to the top of the search results page. You need to spend time getting valuable backlinks. One way that I use to help boost my page placement is through writing similar content, and submitting it to article directories. Make sure the link to the article you posted in the directory goes back to that specific page that you have your affiliate links on. Don’ t send your visitors to your homepage. You loose out on targeted traffic to your affiliate links.
Affiliate Marketing Requires Keyword Density
How often should I mention the keyword I am targeting in my article? That all depends on the search engines. Since Google is the giant, I will mention them first. There is no real number on how often you should mention the keywords in your articles, but Google seems to like anything in the range of 1%-3%. The other search engines are willing to accept articles with as much as 7% of the keyword term in it. I don’t recommend going above 5% myself. You will be risking getting a “Google slap” for spamming. The way I find my keyword density is by dividing the total words used in my article by how many targeted keywords I have. This will give you the percent you are using in your articles.
I have included some screenshots on one of my affiliate link keywords. This particular keyword doesn’t generate muck traffic for me, but I want you to focus on the volume of pages that currently have the keyword in it. If you optimize your page’s keyword density correctly, you can achieve results like this for any keyword you choose!
What Tools Should I Use For Affiliate Marketing
This is a question that gets asked many times! Many people will give you different answers. The important thing to remember is to do the research yourself. If there is someone that you trust, take a look at what they recommend. I personally recommend that you take a look at Affiliate Theme. This is software that was designed by Unique Blog Designs. They have made blog themes for many prominent gurus and businesses on the internet today. This software is an all in one package. I particularly like that that the software is seo friendly. It has many great features that an affiliate marketer need to have. I wouldn’t recommend this to be used as a Wordpress theme for a business blog. This software is designed to sell affiliate links. I have included a video from affiliate theme for you to take a look at.
If you are interested in starting your own hosted blog, but still want to include affiliate links. I would recommend Thesis theme as your Wordpress theme. It is highly customizable and semi-easy to use. It is designed more for that person that wants a professional yet customizable blog. I haven’t done too much with the theme yet. So this is the way it would look on your own Wordpress blog.
A good plugin that I use for displaying affiliate links is called Ninja Affiliate. It is a reasonable price, considering what you get. It will also help with your SEO on your affiliate pages.
I quickly want to mention that I will be coming out with my first podcast this week!:) I will be going into depth about everything you need to do to start your first affiliate marketing website.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for your advice regarding PPC. Before that I was also planning to use PPC to promote my side http://www.the-evault.com. I am a newbie, not much experienced in promoting website, now still learning on it. Thanks ya!
Fantastic post Josh! I use PPC whenever I first launch a website for testing purposes (and to drive a little traffic my way – I’m impatient). But, after a week or two, I cease using it until I need to test again.
I prefer to utilize organic traffic, which of course is a risk in of itself. But it’s free, often very targeted traffic (if proper keyword research and optimization has been performed) and relatively easy to get once you realize Google just wants fresh, quality content.
I think you raise an interesting question here – should PPC be used for affiliate marketing? Of course, it all comes down to how much experience you have with it. Personally, I don’t like spending money on traffic I could be getting for free. Plus, PPC is limited by money and time. SEO can result in long-term traffic.
Good luck in the contest!!!
Thank you for this informative post. I am fairly new to the internet market, and good quality articles such as this one are such a big help. Hopefully this will help me get some organic traffic, as I haven’t seen too much of this…..yet! I am documenting my adsense journey, and have chosen to go with 5 sites, and concentrate on high quality. Content is King, hopefully I will see some results soon!
Hello Michelle, I am glad to see that you liked it! The best way to get readers to your site is through high quality content! I think you are on the right track by doing this! Providing solutions to what people are looking for will cause your visitors to buy through your affiliate links instead of your competitors. Good Luck!
Jason, Good luck with your new home business! PPC can make you money or lose you money. The trick is to learn the keywords that will make you money!
I’ve never had much success with PPC. I think to be really successful at it you have to be prepared to lose money at the start. Once you get it right, it can be an excellent means of generating traffic and making sales.
My preference has always been organic search.