My Approach to Affiliate Marketing - An SEO's Perspective

[zookeeper]

Let's say you are looking to make a living on affiliate sales and you are not looking at this as a hobby or a way to just earn some extra cash. So to make a living you set your goal @ $12000/month.

Getting Started (steps 1 thru 3)
1. Look for markets that offer either high commissions or high $ products/services (even if commissions aren't as high).

2. Look for niches within these markets that are very targeted to the customer purchasing the product/service with low to medium amounts of competition (ex. buy product x online would be very targeted, product x information might not be).

3. Find the right affiliate program (it's all about the math)
A few examples of programs I would or wouldn't join. The 2 main factors are Average $/sale and commission %

Example 1 <--Program I would join-->
Average Sale=$100/sale
Commission=40%

In this scenario, you make on average $40 per sale. If you average 10 sales/day, you make $400/day = $12000/month. 10 sales/day is very realistic and that is why I would join. I would try to hit this market from several niches.

Example 2 <--Program I might join-->
Average Sale=$1000/sale
Commission=10%

In this scenario, you make an average of $100 per sale. If you average 4 sales/day, you make $400/day = $12000/month. You only need to make 4 sales a day
to meet you $12000. It may or may not be realistic to get 4 sales a day considering the average sale price. Whether I join or not would mostly depend on
demand and competition to sway me one way or another.

Example 3<--Program I wouldn't join-->
Average Sale=$100/sale
Commission=5%

In this scenario, you make on average $5 per sale. Lets say you have 50 sales/day (which is a lot), you make $250/day or $7500/day. You would actually need to have 80 sales/day to meet your goal of $12000/month. This would be very difficult to accomplish, so I wouldn't join.

Example 4<--Program I definately wouldn't join-->
Average Sale=$20
Commision=Any %

Low $ products just are worth your time. It's not even worth my time to do the math :-)


Finishing Up (steps 4 and 5)
4. Build multiple sites that are optimized toward each of the niche keywords/phrases you have found.

5. Increase your odds. Repeat steps 1 thru 4 in several markets. "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket". If one market fails you (generally because you lose your search engine listing for one reason or another), you have other markets to fall back on.

Conclusion
Mainly it breaks down to working smarter rather than working harder! Don't get me wrong, a lot of hard work will need to be done to meet your goals.

I don't think it is necessary that the market(s) you are in are something that you are passionate about. If you can find good programs in a market you are
interested in, that is certainly a plus. If you are looking at this as a business to make a living at, this just might not be possible.

[flood6]

Originally Posted by zookeeper

So to make a living you set your goal @ $12000/month.

Maybe I'm being nieve, but how many people are making $12000 per month from one affiliate program?

I could maybe see someone making that from numerous sites pushing numerous affiliate programs run by someone who is really driven, but $144,000 per year from affiliate programs seems to be a really high goal for the average marketer. I'm sure a relatively small percentage can pull it off...am I wrong here?

But you did provide some nice examples about how to break down your monthly goal into daily sales expectations. Thanks.

[zookeeper]

Thanks for your thoughts flood6.

144K/year is sort of a relative number that I picked. It won't happen overnight or without some hard work. It is definately attainable within a year or two of starting a program if you choose the right program(s). There is a good chance you will never reach this if you sell low $ or low commission products (see step 3 of my original post).

There are several programs out there that 12K/month is well within reach. I know of some keywords that a front page listing in G means 40K/month and up. These are very competive keywords that are difficult to get a front page listing for, but it is possible. In fact, there is a very good chance that someone reading this thread is in one of these positions.

Maybe I'm being nieve, but how many people are making $12000 per month from one affiliate program?

To "Increase Your Odds", don't just have one affiliate program or market, have several as I stated in step 5. Build a network of sites and keep them random from one another in order to not get penalized.

Maybe set you goal at 50K the first year. You could basically divide all of my sales numbers by 3 in my examples to reach 50K/year

Example 1 would break down like this:
Average Sale=$100/sale
Commission=40%

In this scenario, you make on average $40 per sale. If you average 3.5 sales/day, you make $140/day = $4200/month = $50400/year. 3.5 sales/day is very reachable in your 1st year.

Please post your thoughts anyone!

[Cedric]

$144,000 per year from affiliate programs seems to be a really high goal for the average marketer. I'm sure a relatively small percentage can pull it off...am I wrong here?

144K (and a great bit more) is absolutely feasible.

But you are not wrong -- only a tiny percentage of affiliates will achieve anything close to that.

[gaill]

I mostly (really kind of totally) agree with you. You are smart and right. The only part I didn't like is when you started to back down slightly...

Originally Posted by zookeeper

Maybe set you goal at 50K the first year. You could basically divide all of my sales numbers by 3 in my examples to reach 50K/year

Cedric is right too. I think I have heard it's the 90/10 rule, some even say 95/5 rule. 10% of the affiliates will make 90% of the $$$

Zookeepers post is important to understand and follow if you are a serious affiliate. Print it out and post it next to your monitors.

[gaill]

Originally Posted by flood6

Maybe I'm being nieve, but how many people are making $12000 per month from one affiliate program?

I could maybe see someone making that from numerous sites pushing numerous affiliate programs run by someone who is really driven, but $144,000 per year from affiliate programs seems to be a really high goal for the average marketer.

If you think average, you will be average.

[zookeeper]

The only part I didn't like is when you started to back down slightly

Agreed, that was pretty weak. Guess I just wanted to show how easy it can be.

[AffiliateDooDoo]

Hi

Using your example, say I only wanted to push the software side of things (not into pharma stuff).

The software + quite smoking plans:

Average price is 40-50, and it pays out 35% or so which is ~30 dollars. Are there people in your program selling 20 products a day? If so, is it 20 in one product alone or combined (and is it possible to do that with just the 2 software products and the smoking affiliates in your product list).

Thanks!(btw, if you prefer to PM me this info that that's ok).

[amberstar702]

Chad's information on affiliate marketing makes a lot of sense to me. Perhaps I should be rethinking my marketing goals because I am certainly not making anywhere near enough to live on from my affiliate programs!

There are very few people I have ever heard about who are making enough to live on. Most of these people are owners of affiliate programs - not the affiliates themselves!

If there are more than one or two webmasters doing well from affiliate programs, I would love to hear about it.

Regards,

[Duilen]

I used to be part of an affiliate program called Excel communications. I knew a guy in that program that was around the 150th top money earner. He made well over 1 million per year. So 144k is definately not unattainable.

I would have stuck with that program but I really prefer internet marketing. Its really tough to sale their phone services online. Plus their services are fairly limited in my area.

[amberstar702]

I looked at their website. They are very upfront about being MLM. I am curious as to how you know the amount of money the person earned. Also, could you not sell their products anyway online?

If I sound a bit cynical, I am....Several years ago, I was the affiliate manager for the Senior Dating niche of a program controlled by one individual. When I saw the actual commissions earned by affiliates, I was shocked. About 10% of the affiliates earned 90% of commissions.

The highest earner of that 10% made $826 commission and the others averaged from $150 to $300 per month while, of course, the majority earned no commissions at all. I stayed with that company only for a few months and then transferred my website to a large, reliable and well-known company.

You also have to be careful that the company has a good track record of paying affiliates on time. I am happy to say that Friendfinder is very honest.

[Duilen]

I didn't know the exact numbers but people seemed to be pretty open with their earnings. Excel didnt seem to be too concerned about people giving out that info. Not nearly as much as some other programs I have been with or looked at anyway.

The reason I had such a tough time selling their product online is because they primarily focused on offline networking. When I joined they had just started with their website and it still had a lot of bugs.

This wouldn't have been such a big deal but at the time I knew little about web design. I couldn't create mini sites to presale their services.

[NALF]

zookeeper when you said:

"4. Build multiple sites that are optimized toward each of the niche keywords/phrases you have found"

How many sites do you think is enough to have a good position in the SERPS for a moderate competitive keyword? 2? 3? 10? 100? more?

Can you get a good position even if all those sites are PR0?

Thank you for your help and ideas!

[zookeeper]

How many sites do you think is enough to have a good position in the SERPS for a moderate competitive keyword? 2? 3? 10? 100? more?

That really depends on the market/competition. What I would suggest doing is build 6-8 sites that are targeted to one specific "idea". "Idea" could be defined as several keywords/phrases. I may look to target 10-12 niche keywords/phrases. You may eventually get top listings for the "idea" as well.

Then, when building up this idea, I would make 2 or 3 of the sites almost strictly informational sites (a couple .info's, one .com), with tons of keyworded content. Continuously add pages of content on a daily/weekly basis. The keyworded content should include subtle outbound keyword oriented anchored text links to the other more commercial based sites (.com's and a few foreign extensions .co.uk*** for example).

Make a few (maybe 3 or 4) of the commercial based sites fairly content heavy as well. The .info's can then be established as more of an "authority". They will build up internal PR, as you add more pages of content. They will feed the commercial sites pagerank thru the anchor text links. The keywords within the anchored text will make it appear that these sites are important for that keyword or phrase, thus boosting rankings in the SERP's for those particular searches.

The other 2 sites can just be strictly commercial. You can use these 2 sites for adwords/overture campaigns to get some quick sales, while you are building your network. Think usability and buyability more than anything for these 2 sites. They can also draw PR from the the info's and the other commercial sites. They don't need a lot of content, but if you make sure your keyword ratio is optimal on them, they have a good chance to get some good listings in the SERP's as well. If you watch the stats on these sites, they will also teach you a lot about the buying tendancies of your market.

***Note 1: I have noticed a lot more non .com extensions getting good G rankings, so I would suggest throwing in a few foreign extensions. Just a hunch.

Note 2: Try to spread out your network of sites as much as possible. PM me if you don't know what I mean by this.

All of this will take time. Be patient and let your adwords/overture sites make you $ while the other sites are building up.

Just my suggestions. Many will tell you that you can accomplish all of this in one site!

[NALF]

Thank you for your help!
I'll give it a try!