Beginners Guide to Affiliate Marketing

SunnySusie

Hi all, I have noticed this topic come up a few times and thought it would be nice to summarise some tips for beginners. For what it is worth, I work at the heart of one of the UK's largest affiliate sites and know a fair amount about all this. I am however posting purely in a personal capacity as I have long enjoyed MSE before getting involved in the industry

I'll be happy to field any questions!

Introduction
What is affiliate marketing? AM is a business model whereby you can promote products from places such as Amazon or Credit Cards on your own website. You get a small fee each time you refer someone. MSE is a great example of AM done well, the site gets a small fee every time you click on one of their starred links*. A good AM site will provide a positive user experience whilst earning its commissions - just like MSE . Can you make any money from this? Yes. But be realistic. It takes work to build up a site. Sure, some people have "got lucky" but for most of us it will take time and commitment.

Get Started
You can get started by building your site on a free blogging platform such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, many successful sites use these free hosting companies and it is quite possible to build an International blog in this way. Alternatively you can buy a domain and host the site yourself using a company such as uk2.net or eukhost.com, this requires more work and costs more however you have full control and "own" the site outright.

A further alternative is a site like hubpages which allows you to enter your own adsense and amazon etc tags so that you can earn some cash from the "hubs" you put up. This is a good way of experimenting and trying out new ideas, it can also be useful for creating back links to your own sites. It's not a license to print money by any means, but my 20 or so hubs generate up to about £1 a day between them. Not a great amount but over a year.... Give it a go!

Once your site is up and running you will first need to create content based around your preferred topic, write up detailed posts that answer specific questions. Think about what kind of things people will ask Google and set about answering them in one detailed post. By targeting "niche" topics you are far more likely to be found! I target specific fashion items for example; a) because I enjoy researching and writing about new trends and b) if you create a site around a specific type of dress it is much easier to get noticed on Google than if you created a site about dresses in general. As your site grows, you can branch out and be more generic, but beginners will need to be very targeted.

And now the important part, you need to make some money from your site! Sign up to Amazon Associates, this is a good starting point for beginners. Amazon is a known and trusted brand so it is one of the easiest places to start with. In time you will want to sign up to the main Affiliate Networks, these are companies that manage similar programs for people like Argos, Dixons and anyone else! Check out Affiliate Window and Commission Junction to begin with.

The Next Step
Setting up a site can take time and work, you need to write up a lot of good quality targeted content that will engage with your audience. But that's not the whole story, the second big part of the game is getting the right people to see your site! It is important to note that you need to get people to the site who have their wallets open and are ready to spend!

The main source of traffic for most sites comes from Search Engines (ie Google!). Fortunately Google have a whole area dedicated to helping us know how to design our sites so that they can rank and classify your pages correctly: webmaster centre. You will want to get your site ranking well for search terms that people looking to buy a product might type in, "cheapest car insurance" or "latest computer games" etc. So make sure these terms appear throughout your site. Be careful not to try and trick Google though, write for your readers, not for Google else you might find your site is penalised !

Every time you create a new page you need to spend as much, or more, time creating back links to that page. These are links from other websites that point towards yours. Make friends with other webmasters, get involved in communities, encourage your readers to link to your site from their blogs. The best links are from other sites that talk about the same topics, this will mean that vistors are more switched on to your content and Google will start to take notice of you.

Further Reading
Here are some good starting points, please be weary of "get rich quick" schemes that charge a fee for essentially the same information. You can get started without spending a single penny.

• Get Started Guide
• Blogging Tips
• Affiliate's Forum

Can it work?
Yes! I run a handful of sites in my spare time, simply as a hobby rather than a money making scheme! It helps that my day job educates me on how this all works, but other than that I have no advantage over any of you when it comes to home based personal projects. I spend an hour or so a night most (but not all!) week days and will often block out Sunday morning to spend on my hobby. I would say I generate an income of between £300 and £500 most months (before tax)! This is good going given that I built my first site just 12 months ago!


Any questions, let me know

kt144

Hello,

Thanks for that info. Very informative. How long did it take you to see any form of return? I set up my first site last week and i am very impatient!!!

SunnySusie

No probs kt. I am glad it has been useful.

Your question is a tough one. Like many things in life... "it depends". Not a great answer I know!

Once a site has been indexed by Google I find a page can start to get 10-20 hits a day if it has been well optimised for a term that people are searching for. And then if it is something that people bid for on Google you can place some adsense adverts on your page and you should start to see 1 or 2 clicks every other day or so. This might yield 20p, 50p, some words are worth pounds.

I can sense this might be another long post lol.

How Google makes all its cash
If you are not familiar with terms like adsense and adwords then you will find this post interesting. Google makes its billions be placing adverts at the top and sides of your search results. To get your advert to show you have to bid against other people who also want to show their advert on the page. The amount you bid will depend massively on the term searched for.

So if someone searches for "cheap car insurance" and you sell car insurance you will want to pay a lot to show your advert because that person is clearly looking to take out a new policy. If someone is searching for "funny cat pictures" you will probably not want to advertise on the results page because someone searching for cat pics is unlikely to have their wallet on the desk ready to splash some cash!

What do people search for?
Google don't share massively accurate data but they do have a tool that shows some useful estimates. Check out Google's keyword tool. You can also see how much people are willing to pay to advertise against a keyword by selecting "Estimated Avg. CPC" from the "Choose columns to be displayed" drop down.

So the trick here is to build a site around a keyword that shows a reasonable CPC value and has a high search volume. Quick tip, high traffic terms that are worth large sums (eg "Car Insurance") are too competitive for us amateurs. Unless you come up with a truly original angle (well done you made a million!) you will be wasting your time!

Go for terms that attract a couple of thousand searches and attract an average CPC of around £1. Then check out Google and see what sites are ranked for those terms. If they are big name household sites then you should think twice about building a site round that term. If a few random blogs and a couple of forum posts show up then you should be easily able to build up some Internet real estate around this topic!

Back to the Original Question
How long does it take to see any returns? Well my most successful site went from nothing to earning about £100 a month almost instantly. The secret? Timing. I built a site around a popular search term that was new. ie a new product that became very popular very quickly. This was in hindsight complete luck. It just happened to be something I was interested in and I noticed there was a lack of information, I got the first on topic blog up and then worked hard to keep it as the topic leader. Unfortunately spotting new products is hard, and you should avoid building a site around a trademark. Keep an eye out for a new fashion trend, new type of media, etc. A recent example might be the new wave of hard drive personal video recorders.

I also got reasonable returns (again in the pounds per day region) using the hubpages site, google for more info or I can write up some more on that sometime if anyone is interested.

I guess the other way to get a quick start is to find an original angle for looking at an old problem.

Anyways, for repeatable site building projects I aim for £1 a day from a site. I can generally hit that after a weekend of work and then perhaps a month to wait for Google to index and rank the site. During this time it is important to try and build some back links in an appropriate manner (not spam!). I believe the real key to this success is picking terms that people search for, that advertisers will bid for and have low competition.

Unfortunately this is much easier said than done and I regularly spend hours and hours brain storming and researching keywords. If you get the right combination and build up 10 or so 500 word original articles then you'll start to see people come through your site. If the content is good and helps those searches then hopefully they will link to your site naturally and it starts to grow.

This takes work, there is no way round that, but it sure beats watching "Cash in the Attic" etc repeats all day - surely? I guess the question is whether there are other work at home projects that will guarantee a steady income more quickly. And perhaps there are - I've never looked into it. I just enjoy the creative process of building sites, writing about things I care about, and slowly building my empire hehe :D! You get to own everything at the end and if it's something you enjoy the money side isn't so important (but very welcome!!)

Keep it Real
I am definitely one of those that won't promise that you can make millions from this by doing little work in no time. I have always aimed to make a few pounds per day from any site, and of course this all adds up and can be the difference between a holiday or not the following year.

Best of luck. :j
xxx

red_devil

I sent you a pm not long ago.

SunnySusie

red_devil wrote: »

I sent you a pm not long ago.

Hi RD, I just sent a reply.

I have always thought that real world small business owners are well placed to start up blogs and websites. The real advantage you guys have is knowing your topic. You will be able to write endless posts on your products, the industry, news and will be able to write as an expert. Given that you make a living from knowing your business this should come across in writing and in time I see no reason why a blog wouldn't build a following and you can become a known authority on the topic within the blogosphere. Once you earn that position you can sell advertising, promote your own business or other store's prducts

Although always remember to maintain a positive user experience - people will accept a commercial side to a site (just like here on MSE) but it needs to be handled well (just like on MSE !).

Good luck.

mizzbiz

Thanks SunnySusie, this is all really great advice, especially as it's something i've been toying with half heartedly for quite a while now.
Have you got any example sites we could look at?

mizzbiz

Thanks, that's really helpful - so the sites are soooo simple, targeted at one product but with multiple affiliate deals for a particuar kind of product.

SunnySusie

Absolutely. The key is to target something quite specifically and to check out the competition first. Try and do some brainstorming and look for an untapped product. Check that it is something people are interested in and has some monetisation opportunity.

The amateur has little to no chance of building a "car insurance" web site. You are competing with people who have a team of 100 and million pound marketing budgets. However if you start up a forum for green driving or a local traffic campaign group, or some other angle, maybe you have a chance.

GavB79

I would say that where possible, target your sites to a US market. The examples given earlier are all .uk suffixes, but where possible most terms would benefit from a .com domain.
Having a co.uk doesn't preclude you from US visitors, but their market is so much bigger! There are 60 million people in the UK; there are 300 million in the US. If your site is US-centric you will rank higher on Google.com and will get more visitors, thus potentially more clicks. Remember, the internet has no physical boundaries! You WILL see a better return ranking on Google.com as opposed to Google.co.uk, for the vast majority of keywords.
For example, "birthday flowers" as mentioned earlier has 10,000 local UK searches per month, but 50,000 local USA searches.

GettingItRight

A big thank you for your contribution SunnySusie. I have always wondered about affiliate marketing but never really looked indepth on the subject. Your information has inspired me to consider setting up a website using affiliate marketing.

At the moment I have not long ago started writing a blog and unfortunately they do not allow me to use any personal affiliate links. However I want to build up my current blog's content a little and give it some substance before I begin starting a full website project.

SunnySusie

Hi, thanks for all the PMs from all you lovely people. Unfortunately MSE forbids advertising so I simply cannot link to any of my own sites. I am posting here purely in a personal capacity and will be happy to answer questions, but please keep links to your own sites out of the thread and please don't ask me for links to my sites.

Not my rules! I've had a warning PM from the forum Gods ! I think one of my posts has already been deleted (and I haven't even linked to any of my own work !)

Pros and Cons of Operating International Sites
@GavB79: I agree that US based sites can be lucrative but there are some localisation (localization ?) issues to be aware of. I sometimes find it is easy to "specialise" on topics that I can talk endlessly about and sometimes that can be hard when discussing things from a US perspective. But some topics are universal so it is definitely worth thinking about. The second big problem is competition, US affiliates are way ahead of us here so you'll find there are 10 other people competing against you for anything but the real original ideas. So it might be more lucrative but it may also be harder to get started.

If buying a domain most people would suggest buying the .com anyway, but obviously they are harder to get hold of. A well matched .co.uk is going to do well in the google.co.uk search engines and targeting a smaller audience could help you get going. Ideally, if you speak another language then you could target countries with a less developed Internet space. By getting in early you can get a real jump on the competition.

I have also made a site that targets the entire world. The problem here is that it becomes hard to direct people to the right Amazon store for them (for example), although schemes like adsense will "geo target" the ads. This means that they will display adverts that are relevant to the current viewers location. If you are in the US you say an American ad, in France and you should see one in French.

So I use Adsense and then use Google Analytics to get a good view of my international make up. I can then target the top few countries that are originating my traffic. Mostly US and UK which makes it quite easy, you can then do two links, one for a US store and one for a UK one.