Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (2nd Edition)

If You're an Affiliate: The Gold Rush Is On!

The joy of being an affiliate is that you're not responsible for developing, packaging, and shipping products or services. Hurray! Your focus is limited to marketing. Yes, you're taking a risk promoting merchants without upfront payment, but the financial payoffs can be huge. I've known affiliates who've generated well over $10,000 per month in commission fees, a significant amount of which came from search engine marketing.

All of the techniques in this book are critical to helping you dramatically increase your affiliate commissions. Are you wondering why I'm so harsh on affiliates in this chapter? Well, I believe trademark owners with strong brand name recognition have already invested millions of dollars igniting market demand for their products. They have the right to protect their profits resulting from trademark marketing.

Not to my surprise, I heard that an apparel manufacturer cut their entire affiliate program because several affiliates continually violated their agreement by marketing trademarks on search engines. Now, no affiliates enjoy working for this company. Further cutbacks are coming. However, programs won't disappear altogether as long as affiliates are team players (I also participate in affiliate programs, as a merchant and affiliate). I'd like these true marketing partners to continue earning generous income for their efforts.

Branded companies may start hand selecting a few affiliates who will be well rewarded for their supportive, not combative, efforts. There will also be new opportunities to work with small and medium- sized businesses investing only in performance-driven marketing. This is the perfect time for honorable affiliates to take center stage. In an effort to support the existence of affiliate programs while growing your personal income as an affiliate, here are a few recommendations:

• Build a good content site: Don't build doorway pages for the search engines. These pages would simply link to merchants without providing any valuable content to web users. This clutters up search engines with junk pages, infuriates consumers who won't buy anything from them anyway, and will quickly end your program with the merchants who spot these. Design an attractive, information-rich site for consumers, then integrate merchant links into your site. Your conversion rates will be better and merchants will be happy. Market generic, yet related , keywords in the search engines to drive relevant traffic to your site.

• Support the brand, don't duplicate it: Web pages with content that has been duplicated from merchant sites are red flags to algorithm-based search engines. It's regarded as a spam tactic. The duplicate or original pages can be deleted from the search engines' databases. Use original content to prevent this from occurring and to show merchants you're not just mimicking their sites.

• Maximize income by joining multiple programs: Find merchants that offer affiliate programs related to the same theme. Build a content site around a topic that promotes an array of merchants; for example, a health spa site could link to merchants who sell health or spa magazines, bath products, massage gifts, home hot tubs, resort vacations , and travel books. Start with the keyword research tools in Chapter 3, "Choosing Keywords for Maximum Performance," to find popular topics. You have unlimited options! Consider joining an affiliate network such as Be Free or Commission Junction to instantly connect with a wide range of merchants. Also check out http://www.associateprograms.com for a directory that lists thousands of merchants with affiliate programs.

• Contact companies without an affiliate program: Once you've established a track record of selling products for merchants, hand select the companies you'd like to promote, even if they don't appear to offer an affiliate program. There's a chance they're working with a small number of top producers . Sell your experience, and you might join their elite sales force. There'll be more of the commission pie to split among fewer affiliates.

• Be first, or be better: Savvy affiliates are all over the search engines. The ones who get there first to promote a product or service score a high percentage of the sales. Once others join in, consumers are given a greater selection of online stores. Therefore, if you enter the game late, differentiate the offer proposed in your ad listings from those of other affiliates.

Affiliates and merchants can turn to the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association (http://www.iafma.org) as a resource on revenue-sharing ethics and standards. This organization is promoting self-regulation as a way to expand this industry while benefiting affiliates, merchants, and consumers. By working together, merchants reach new customers on a pay-per-performance basis, while their affiliates earn potentially unlimited income for their efforts.