Beginners Guide to Affiliate Marketing

save-a-lot

Hi

I am an affiliate marketeer and I have some other advice, not yet mentioned. It is the easiest thing to do to start affiliate marketing by getting a white label website (this is where the content and look and feel is instant) HOWEVER, since these sites are replicated over and over and over and over again the share of the pie is very limited. This is because of penalties from the search engines.. these penalties are known as duplicate content penalties and this will seriously dent the flow of natural search engine traffic.. in fact it will kill it. I run a database driven site, so I suffer duplicate content penalties (I think) as my pages are based on template pages that the content is delivered into, so on my pages I have content in the template and also content delivered from the database, but since the structure is the same on all pages this does limit traffic. If you find yourself in a situation like this it is a good idea to build onto a site something that allows real content to be maintained.

As suggested, unique AND useful information will help your site grow. When optimising a website for google et. al. the content should be readable be the human eye, but also contain repetition of phrases you want the page to rank well for. Use the H tags, but make use of the CSS to make H1 and H2 text appear to look correct in your content. The H tags are important as they are seen as headings in the content.

SunnySusie.. I am intrigued as to which network you work for.

SunnySusie

Good points Save-a-lot, I have never tried white labels myself but I can see the advantage of having a lot of the back end db work taken off your hands. bt like you say, ideally being able to add your own content, personality, spin, etc is going to be critical to stand out from the dozens of others doing the same.

save-a-lot wrote: »

SunnySusie.. I am intrigued as to which network you work for.

I don't work for a network, I work for a website which makes money through affiliation and also people make money through us by being our affiliates - so I guess I see both sides of the game. I'm afraid I do not want to say who - I am posting here purely in a personal capacity, MSE also has strict rules on advertising, and finally I wish to remain "anonymous" on the MSE board and will refuse to link to anything of mine for that reason alone. Soz .

DanJackson

Top posts Susie! I have been meaning to get into this for ages but was getting baffled by the amount of websites out there promising you help but only if you sign up for their $$$$ scheme!

I run my own website (a photography portfolio and self-hosted Wordpress blog) so I am no stranger to blogging, web design etc. However I do have a few questions if that's OK....

1. Where do you find the best earning affiliate schemes? Is there a directory that lists them all or is it a case of going to certain sites like Amazon and just trawling through to see who offers the best schemes?

2. How many different affiliate sinks do you link to on your blogs? i.e. If you have a blog about item X do you only link to one or two sites that sell Item X or do you link to as many as possible?

3. How many hits do your blogs get per day and how long did it take you to build them up to the level they are now so that they are earning good money?

4. How much money do you invest in each site? Do you pay for adverts on Google etc?

I am sure I can think of more questions later!

Thanks in advance.

save-a-lot

Hi

Try this thread, pretty much covers the main players, however it is a 2 year old thread.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=482439

to quote the main post in that thread, here you go...

Hi

Here is a good list of affiliate networks that you can use....

https://www.affiliatewindow.co.uk
https://www.affiliatefuture.co.uk
https://www.buy.at
https://www.tradedoubler.co.uk
https://www.dgmpro.com
https://www.omguk.com (lots of financial stuff and high paying)
https://www.smart-quotes.net/affiliate.html (more financial)
https://www.cj.com
https://www.affiliate-advantage.co.uk
https://www.affili.net
https://www.clixgalore.co.uk
https://www.netklix.com

A good way to build an affiliate site is to find product feeds and use something like https://www.pricetapestry.com to display the results. There are a few ways to get clever about all this.

Those providers below offer contextual ads, google being the best, Oxado not as good. Miva is cool as they do the inline advertising, this is where their script searches keywords in the text of your pages and underlines these keywords which shows an expanded ad upon mouseover - this used to only be available on high traffic sites so it is a good that it is available to lower traffic sites.
https://www.google.com/adsense
https://www.mirago.com/partnerships/index.htm (they do contextual and self hosted search engine)
https://www.oxado.com
https://www.miva.com/uk/content/partners/miva_mc/ (inline and contextual adverts)

add to this, and now my main affiliate network partner. https://www.webgains.com because of the type of merchants they attract are in my niche.

save-a-lot

Smw22654 wrote: »

www. crap US money making scam affiliate link .com

Put www. in front of the above link!!

idiot - :spam:

cally6008

Webgains = Poor customer service taking two months to receive a reply on if a company with them can supply a certain creative, then they have to ask what size it was despite that info being in the original question. Not to mention the taking two months to decide if my application to join a couple of programmes was successful. Then they took my earnings off me after five weeks due to invalid email address', one of which was (I'm 99.9% sure) mine which I use for all my survey websites so I know fine well that its ** working.

And breathe ...

save-a-lot

webgains - had no problems personally, but I only use them for about 10 merchants

save-a-lot

See responses below...

DanJackson wrote: »

Top posts Susie! I have been meaning to get into this for ages but was getting baffled by the amount of websites out there promising you help but only if you sign up for their $$$$ scheme!

I run my own website (a photography portfolio and self-hosted Wordpress blog) so I am no stranger to blogging, web design etc. However I do have a few questions if that's OK....

1. Where do you find the best earning affiliate schemes? Is there a directory that lists them all or is it a case of going to certain sites like Amazon and just trawling through to see who offers the best schemes?

financial products, credit cards, loans, insurance etc pay out decent commission, so try, omguk and smart-quotes, mobile phones also pay well, so there are tonnes of merchants to choose from on most networks


2. How many different affiliate sinks do you link to on your blogs? i.e. If you have a blog about item X do you only link to one or two sites that sell Item X or do you link to as many as possible?

try MIVA inline ads in a blog would work well, with these you get a double underline in your text, the system finds keywords and on mouseover to these double underlined phrases adverts appear, this pays per click


3. How many hits do your blogs get per day and how long did it take you to build them up to the level they are now so that they are earning good money?

I do not run a blog, but I have a tight niche that I do not stray beyond, this has created a really good conversion rate on a reasonably small amount of visitor


4. How much money do you invest in each site? Do you pay for adverts on Google etc?

that would be telling... HOWEVER, try this... free advertising on Facebook - see this thread... http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1884407


I am sure I can think of more questions later!

Thanks in advance.

quatrofromageo

I discovered affiliate marketing myself through hobby blogs online.
There was 1 retailer in my niche running their own affiliate scheme who have a great reputation and very reasonable prices.

My blog is currently getting around a thousand visits a day, but only earns about £2 per day.

There's no way I could go full time on affiliate sales like this.
Or do full-time affiliates have hundreds of sites?

red_devil

i have a domain name which could be used a gift list wish list site. There are so many out there though I know it wouldnt be worthwhile! Do people even use them anyway?

I know I would pay someone to set it up and it wouldnt take off you need lots and lots of sign ups too many out there!

If anyone has any other ideas that would be good!