12.01.06

Getting Started with Christmas Affiliate Programs

Posted in Blogging for Profit, Other Money Makers at 11:03 am by admin

Forget Thanksgiving — anyone who goes Christmas shopping in November is crazy as far as I’m concerned. The first of December marks the beginning of Christmas season for me — the tree goes up, the weather sharply cools down, and I start to plan my shopping. Like every year before it, this year will make new records for the amount of Christmas purchases which are made online. Like every year before it, this year is the best year to start selling online through affiliate programs and make a few extra bucks to pay for those “must-have” gifts that you’ll need to purchase for that special someone, or even yourself.

I’ve spent months reading about affiliate marketing, perusing forums and trying to learn from others who claim to be making upwards of $10,000/month from this stuff. I still haven’t quite figured it out but I’m getting closer, and I wanted to share some of this knowledge with you.

The Basics of Affiliate Marketing

Well, it really isn’t too complicated in theory. You refer someone to a product through a link, and if they make a purchase you receive a kickback. It might be a couple bucks, it might be a couple hundred bucks, it all depends on the terms of the referral program and the size of the purchase. The real work in affiliate marketing is actually marketing someone else’s product. This includes developing a nice brochure-ware website/blog, answering customer questions, and generating traffic to your site. From what I’ve learned, this is the basic process flow for succeeding in this line of business, and the direction I intend to take this holiday season with my own attempts.

Affiliate Marketing To-Do List

1) Find a product you want to market

2) Design a nice website / blog describing the product and provide something of value to the reader regarding this item. A good suggestion is to write a detailed, honest review of the product you are selling.

3) Promote your website on Google AdWords. Find inexpensive keywords to market your site which have a CPC is less than the average return you will see per visitor to your site. More on this later.

4) Sit back and let the referrals roll in.

Step One..
The first thing that you will need to do is find a product which you want to market. Search Google for a few hours with different product names and see what advertisements pop up; This will help you to see how saturated the market already is for this product. Hot items this Christmas are cell phones, cell phone ring tones are another hot item, eBay is another, and the list goes on. Just use your imagination.

Step Two..
Once you have settled on the product you will be promoting, the next step is to design an attractive website to sell the product. This is typically called the “Landing Page”, as it is the first page your visitor will see when they click on an advertisement leading to your site. It is very important to the pricing of Google AdWords ads that you include as much original content here as possible; I’ll elaborate more on this one in a moment. Good suggestions for original content are to write detailed product reviews, perhaps integrate a blog into the landing site, etc. Anything that will set you apart from the others marketing the same product will be helpful.

Step Three..
Now that your landing page is prepared and all of your referral links are configured, you’re ready to start receiving traffic. The best way to bring traffic to this kind of site is to purchase it. Go create a Google AdWords account and check out the prices for a few keywords which relate to your site. Eg. “cell phones”, “ring tones”, “online auctions”, etc. Perhaps if you are marketing a referral link to eBay, you might try the keywords “ipod”, or “playstation 3″, as those will be very popular searches this season.

This step is the trickiest and will require some fine tuning in your keyword selection. The goal here is to find a balance between cost per click of an advertisement, to number of visitors to your site required to receive a referral payout. For example, let’s do some simple math:

Simple Referral / AdWord Cost Calculation:

Let’s say that you’re marketing a product which will give you a $25 referral fee for every item sold. Now, let’s assume that you developed an effective landing page, and will have a 40% click-through rate, and a 25% conversion rate. What this means is that of 1000 visitors to your site, 100 of them will click on your referral link, and 25 of those will actually make a purchase.

Now, of 1000 visitors, you are expected to make the following in revenue: $25 payout * 0.40 (chance of click) * 0.25 (chance of sale) = $2.50/1000 visitors in revenue. This gives us a revenue of 25 cents per visitor to our site.

Now, all we have to do is find some keywords on AdWords, or another contextual advertising network that will give us a cost of less than 25 cents per click! So, if you find that the right keywords for your site will cost 20 cents / click, then for every click, you can count on a 5 cent profit. This may not sound like much, however when you multiply this by 5000 visitors a day * 24 days left until Christmas, you’ll be spending January in the Bahamas!

Picking the Right Affiliate Network

So all of this sounds just great, but where’s the best place to start looking for affiliate programs? There are lots of good affiliate networks out there, but after some time of asking around, you will quickly find that everyone’s favorite is AzoogleAds. They have the largest selection of products & campaigns to select from and have the highest payouts. The only drawback is that applications take a little while to be approved as the demand for their affiliate program is so high. I’ve been told (completely a rumor) that if you register under someone’s referral, that their application will be processed faster. I’m not sure if this is the case, or simply rumor that’s been spread around the Internet to encourage referrals for the owner of the link. Either way, check them out.

Good luck, and happy Christmas shopping!

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