Author: Joe Whyte

I had a chance to speak with Jeremy Shoemaker from ShoeMoney Media Group about affiliate marketing yesterday. Since Jeremy is a “super affiliate” making MORE then a living online he was a perfect candidate and resource for this post! Also since Lunarpages.com’s marketing team will be meeting up with him at Affiliate Summit I thought it would be a good idea to introduce us before hand ;-).

Ok, so you have purchased your new hosting account with 250GB of storage and 2500GB of data transfer with the ability to host 11 sites on one hosting account all for only $6.95. You have purchased your domain names that are keyword rich and you have gotten your Quality templates from Flash-Template-Design.com. You are almost all ready to start but you need to join your affiliate sites.

Deciding to pick the “right” affiliate:
How does one pick the right affiliate? To start you could always start with a company/product that you are familiar with and that you use. This will help you build out content and your affiliate site much faster (at least for your first site). One of the main things to look for would be how notable a product/service is based on brand awareness. For example, if you where to choose a service that no-one has ever heard of the chances of getting a good CTR and ROI is going to be much smaller then if you are promoting a product with mass appeal and brand awareness. One of the last things to look at when considering an affiliate is the commission rate. The commission rate is very important when considering an affiliate because it is truely the “bottom line” but to be successful you need to look at all aspects to determine your over-all potential ROI. In a recent interview with Jeremy Shoemaker “Super Affiliate” this is what he said when I asked him:

Joe: What are the top things you look for when considering an affiliate?
Jeremy: Reputation is #1 you can learn a lot from others experiences. Payout #2

How to setup the right Affiliate Marketing Strategy:
Some general rules you might want to consider when setting up an affiliate site is to first prepare yourself that its going to be a lot of work to be successful. Examine your competition and see what your competition is doing. A way to find your competition is to do a “Google” search for a product or service you are marketing. Are they utilizing PPC? Are they ranking in the SERP’s? How long has this site been around? How many inbound links does the site have? How many pages do they have and is the content original or duplicate? After examining these points you can successfuly create your strategy. If gaining position in the serps is going to take to long to monetize your site then definitely try PPC through mulitiple PPC venues. Remember traffic is the key!

Joe: What is your strategy when putting up an affiliate site?
Jeremy: To start I focus on volume and then dial it in after time with a lot of testing. If I can break even the first week of a new campaign I consider that a success. If I am not at 800%++ ROI within a month I consider it a failure.

How do you start generating affiliate sales?
So we know that first you need traffic in order to get sales. The more traffic comes into your site the better chance you have for getting affiliate sales on your site. I asked Jeremy “super affiliate” this question and he responded with a short but powerful answer!

Joe: how do you start generating affiliate sales?
Jeremy: PPC!!!

One of the best ways to increase sales, drive traffic and create brand awareness is going to be PPC. You gain top position is the SERP’s and your name and your product are going to be visible to a large percentage of searches ultimately creating a good platform for some viral marketing. Jeremy says that “Almost all of my sites are either ppc or get traffic directly from word of mouth“. A great way to boost your viral marketing is to start offering something free on your site. Lets say you have a “web hosting” affiliate. You could offer a free ebook about web hosting troubleshooting and load balancing or give away an informative newsletter that keeps people up to date with what your affiliate is offering and tips and tricks to help them manage their hosting account. By offering your viewers something useful and FREE they will tell others about it and you can start seeing your affiliate site grow by leaps and bounds!

Some other ways to generate traffic:

Digg.com
Reddit.com
Netscape.com
StumbleUpon.com
Myspace.com
Shoutwire.com
Craigslist.com

Monetizing your site even MORE!
Affiliate sales is a great way to make money but what about the people who visit your site but DO NOT purchase anything. How can you make money off of them? I will talk about 2 way’s to do this.

1) Contextual Advertising: Once you have a good amount of inbound links and your site has some PageRank you will be able to sell some text links on your site. The higher your PageRank the more money you will make. This is a great way to keep steady income coming in from your site each month because literally your site will just sit there without you touching it and you will be getting paid from letting people advertise on your site. Use sites like Text-Link-Ads.com, TextLinkBrokers.com and Performancing.com (there are others but these are some of the best) to setup this money making opportunity.

2)Adsense: this is the best way to capitalize of your visitors who DO NOT purchase a product via your site. If they do not find what they are looking for then most likely a link on your site via “adsense” will! Depending on the product and marketplace for these terms the price per click will vary. Jeremy mentions where he likes to place his adsense:

Jeremy: ‘I run it on some of them but pretty low on the page or use adlinks where navigation would be”.

Joe: How long do you usually spend creating and optimizing your affiliate site?

Jeremy: tons of time. They can always be improved

Joe: What is the biggest piece of advice you can give our affiliates?

Jeremy: TEST TEST TEST TEST look at what other people in your space are doing and learn from it.
Thanks Jeremy and I look forward to seeing you at affiliate summit!!!