Earning 100 dollars a day or more from affiliate programs(actual guide inside)

I keep receiving questions from people in other threads asking for details about my affiliate marketing strategy. Here I decided to lay out the basics.

Part of it is selecting the right advertiser. The high dollar items are the ones most people go after, but in reality those aren't always the best. Typically high dollar items have higher competition and thus result in poor conversions if you can even drive traffic to them. Think of these like the high paying keywords in adsense.

Take a minute and think of affiliate marketing the same way you think of search engine optimization. In SEO we have learned that going for long tail keywords often ends with us getting higher rankings and more overall traffic. The competition is less fierce for these keywords.

Affiliate programs are the same way. Go through the advertiser list and with each product ask yourself, "would someone buy this online"? It sounds simple, but that's one of the first mistakes people make. They don't select a product that will ever sell well online.

Next is getting traffic to the affiliate. There are numerous methods that work. First and most common is placing banner ads or affiliate links on an already existing domain. This usually has low conversion rates and ends with the webmaster getting away from affiliate programs completely.

Next would be the creation of landing pages. Landing pages are tailored specifically toward the product you are trying to sell. They funnel you down and make you want to click the link and buy the product at the end. These typically have much higher conversion rates, but the question often becomes, "How do I get traffic to my landing pages"?

That has a couple answers. Most will invest in PPC or pay per click campaigns. This can work quite well depending on the product, or it can end with you losing money. It's risky to say the least.

The second, and method I actually use is to build cloaked domains on throw away domains that drive traffic to the landing pages or straight to the affiliate while showing lots of rich content to the search engines. Unlike ppc, this is very inexpensive, plus it gives me the flexibility to redirect my traffic anywhere I want. Most affiliate programs have no problem with you driving traffic straight to their own sales pages or landing pages. If they do have a specific rule against it you can always redirect the traffic straight to your own landing page, and then to the affiliates sales page.

Here is an example of building cloaked pages for cj.com http://www.simplifiedsec.com/cj_scraper/cj_scraper.php

There you have the basics. Now you don't need to buy that shiny new e-book you had your eye on all week . Seriously though, ask some questions

 

thank you for your videotutorial it is useful

 

Quite a few people were asking about the specifics of cloaking so I figured a visual example would be best.

 

I have a question for you and I know you're gonna hate answering it lol. What are typical conversion rates for landing pages? I know it differs A LOT, but let me give you an example. Im just wondering how much of a number's game it is...

Say you have a useful product - an e-book for example - for the targeted audience..something that lives up to the 'would someone want to buy it (technically)?' rule. Umm....say its a site about basketball, which gives a lot of useful advice on dribbling, shooting, blablabla. Enough to keep people coming back (I know most ppl usually dont buy the first time they get to your site). Now you put just one e-book (dont wanna confuse anybody) with enticing copy on your site...or well landing page..or every page of the site. Say it's 20$ or maybe 10$...

What would be an 'average conversion rate' for that product, if you get traffic that's searching for information on 'how to play basketball' or 'basketball dribbling' or 'basketball shooting'? By average I mean...anything that you would consider not bad for that product and not great either conversion-wise ;-) just to get an idea....

 

I have no problem answering that. Looking over my cj stats I am averaging an EPC of about 8.00, so overall for the three months I am earning 8.00 per click which isn't bad considering I go straight to the affiliates landing pages. The traffic is pretty well targeted. On an average day I will see between 2,000 and 3,000 clicks. Now this is across 30 or 40 affiliates and over 100 domains so it's going to vary widely. My higher converting niches have an epc of 60-70 dollars per click, but these are usually somewhat higher $$ items.

It's a really tough question when you sit down and write it out simply because there are so many factors. Getting targeted traffic is one of the biggest variables of course.

Looking over it though it's far better paying on an epc basis than say adsense for example.

 

Have you checked with CJ to see if driving traffic this way complies with the TOS?

 

I've done this for almost 3 years with cj. I would have heard something by now. I've even been reported before and they didn't say anything.

 

Have you tried sub-domains? Like one domain and then a sub-domain for each site?

In CJ, CPM is actually per 100 clicks. EPC $8.00 would be eight cents a click, or $8.00 per 100 clicks.

 

The software I use allows me to do sub domains or sub folders for the sites. Sub domains used to do much better in google because they treated each one as a unique domain. My experience now seems to indicate that this is not the case any longer, or at least to a lesser degree. Yahoo on the other hand still seems to treat sub domains as individual domains.

 

I just want to help people begin to think outside the box. That's where the money lies in this online marketplace.

 

What always convinces me that something works is proof of earnings...

Where's the check???

 

So how do you drive traffic to your cloaked domains? You basically tried to answer the landing pages question without giving an answer.

 

The cloaked pages drive the traffic to the landing pages. The cloaked pages have tons of unique content. The system I use also gathers backlinks for the cloaked pages using various methods. These long tail keywords are easy to rank for so it isn't difficult.

 

You asked for it. Here is one of my affiliate programs so far this month. I work with over a dozen different programs.

 

Meaning comment spam? What else could be automated?

 

actually no. We use blog/ping, we send trackbacks, and have something to do some .gov and .org linking. All of that is optional though and selectable in your settings. If you chose to use it fine, but you don't have to. We leave that up to the individual.

 

So you do trackback spam? Alright.

 

It's an option as I said. No one has to use it if they feel uncomfortable doing so. This is just one of the many ways to get links back. The links are all targeted as they are sent out only to related places. Again, it's all optional. I'm just pointing out what can be done....

 

very interesting thread.. thanks for the informations

 

I have to admit, that's the first cool online marketing application I've seen in half a year (they don't come along very often). Nice work.