Author: Joe Whyte

After you have built your affiliate site and done your OPO (on page optimization) how do you start generating traffic to this site? Utilizing SEO can take a long time and yes SEO should be in mind when doing an affiliate site but if thats all you rely on then you are not going to see an ROI for a very long time. So how do you get around this and what are the best ways to drive traffic to your affiliate site.

Over the last couple weeks some really great post’s have come out outlining many of the topics I will be covering so you will be getting a cornucopia of info wealth with this single post.

The first question is how to draw traffic to your affiliate site without doing SEO. Again make sure you do SEO your site but to reap benefits rather quickly then utilize some of the ideas listed by scoreboard-media.com , toprankblog and SEOmoz. here is a brief breakdown of traffic sources you can call upon.

1. Blogging
2. Podcasting
3. Link buying
4. TV Buys
5. Web Directories
6. Ad Networks
7. Online Forums
8. Social Media
9. Email List Rentals
10. Webinars/Video
11. Online Press Releases
12. PR Firm
13. Event Media Sponsorships
14. Sponsored Reviews
15. Syndicate Your Content

This is a pretty good list and some ideas are going to be much more worth your time then others. For instance submitting to web directories are not going to get you the type of traffic you want. Out of this list I will suggest which ones I personally would target when setting up an affiliate site for traffic.
Ad Networks (Pay Per Click)
Social Media
Online Forums

These are going to be the best way to get high volumns of traffic without spending an arm and a leg. One of the most effective ways of generating a ton of traffic is going to be through your social media. Now SMO is a completly different ball game then SEO and an emerging highly qualified authority on Social Media is Pronet Advertising. They discuss social media and how to optimize it.

Something that was not really mentioned was a tactic called Link Baiting. Link baiting is basically setting up quality content or a quality tool where people will naturally link to it like a fish to bait. A great list of link baiting tactics has been created by andy hagans and in essence this article is quality link bait!

Now that you have some tools and information on building traffic using other methods rather than SEO its time to talk about PPC. Literally the fastest way to draw targeted traffic to your site right away. I use Google Adwords and Stumbleupon Ads and the new Yahoo Search Marketing for this. The reason I choose these three is because with google and yahoo I am covering about 78% of the search market and I am using stumbleupon as a filler to drive a set amount of predefined targeted traffic.

The experts say you can see if a campaign will yeild profitable results within a 24 hour period. So what is the trick of testing your PPC? The very first thing I would suggest is reading Aaron walls PPC Secrets book. It goes through everything from writing creative ad copies to how to improve CTR and conversions. Its a must read for anyone attempting to do PPC.

At affiliate Summit West Shoemoney said that when he sets up a PPC campaign for his affiliate sites he pays NO MORE then .05 cents for each keyword. The trick to the campaigns is choosing long tail keyword phrases and target specific product names or brands. For example if you are selling sirius statelite radios then for your ppc campaign you might target “sirius channel guide” or “howard stern sirius satelite” or “starmate boombox” or “discount sirius satelite radios” or “sirius satelite radio coupons” or more product specific like “stiletto sl100″ or “starmate” or “sporters” or “sportster 1200″. These are just some test phrases and words I would target if I was doing an affiliate campaign for sirius satelite radio.

Since the Overture bid tool is no more I have been using the google keyword selector tool a lot more now but I also rely on keyword discovery and word tracker to help me. Remember to make creative ads and interesting landing pages for all of your keywords as they will convert a lot better. For landing page optimization check out these resources: Bruce Clays Landing page optimization, Marketing Sherpa’s Landing Page Optimization book and Marketing Experiments/Landing pages. Another great tool to use is a PPC spy program called Keyword Compete which is a powerful tool for affiliate marketers. If you want to see what your competition is doing you can see what words/ phrases they are targeting by using keyword compete. Check it out and I am sure you will be an avid user.
A basic formula to determine if a campaign is succesfful is to remember this calculation.

Daily Sales Income – Daily Advertising Expenses / number of sales = Average customers value

If this number is in the negative you may need to rework you advertising expenses or your entire campaign.

When considering if a PPC campaign has been succesful I usually look the bottom line. Some people think that a high CTR above 5% is success but for me if I have 5% CTR and no sales then it is a huge failure and I am loosing money. I recommend keeping an eye on the bottom line that being cost of ads vs conversions. If you are seeing high impressions and low CTR you might consider beefing up your ad copy and if you are seeing high CTR and no conversions you might consider re-evaluating your landing pages. The worst thing you can do is get yourself into a bidding war so keep it simple and expand from there.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Jabber, SEO, Sales & Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed . Both comments and pings are currently closed.