How to Make It Work

Ok people, here’s a rundown of the Commission Blueprint 2.0 (CB) technique of affiliate marketing. 

Commission Blueprint is an affiliate marketing course comprised of video lessons, pdf files, and website templates.  It also includes the use of various keyword research tools.  At $497 it isn’t cheap, but at least it’s not one of those recurring monthly membership sites that can cost a lot more over time.

I’ll explain their approach, and inject my experience and analysis.  Here goes:

As an affiliate marketer, what you’re doing is promoting other people’s products/services online and getting a commission for all sales you are responsible for.   Your sales are tracked by specially coded links that identify you as the referrer, and the retailer or affiliate program intermediate cuts you a commission check every two weeks or every month for the sales your links generated.

Here’s the challenge.  Most of the affiliate offers are in high-demand, high competition consumer goods and services categories, such as car insurance, bags and accessories, online dating, kitchen appliances, and so on.  Google any one of these keywords and you’ll see over 10 million competing pages.  If that wasn’t enough, the retailer itself that has the affiliate program  is going full-throttle online, promoting its products.  So you basically are competing with the product owner, who owns an authority site that you are not going to be able to outrank because it has an aged domain and hundreds if not thousands of indexed pages.  Give up yet?

So, how can you be successful in affiliate marketing, given this scenario?  In the past, it was easier because the big companies didn’t know how to do SEO for their sites.  Now in 2009, with all the SEO consultants and in-house SEO experts, the WalMarts and small-to-medium sized retailers are on par and even better at SEO and IM than your average, solo internet marketer who has bought 50 courses and ebooks and is on multiple email lists.   Yes, the picture turns more gloomy– the retailers have the resources and know-how to bury you in the SEO game now.

BREAKING UPDATE:   The internet marketing community is abuzz about a recent FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rule that is going to make the affiliate marketing game even more difficult.  Basically, the FTC is going to crack down on false and misleading claims in advertising.  No longer can you cloak an affiliate link and leave it at that.  You are going to have to place a statement on your webpage that has the links that specifically mentions that you get commissions if the visitor buys something through your link.  And you can no longer state “results are not typical” if you promote any kind of money making product; you must state something more realistic.  However, since this is a new regulation, there is going to be a time lag on enforcement/ penalties.  We’ll have to see how this rule pans out in the next couple of months, and adjust our marketing accordingly.

But, alas, some persistent IMs have found windows of opportunity.  Like a small group of wildebeests finding a small pocket of water in a parched desert.  Here’s the angle:

It’s all about KEYWORD research.  Apparently, it is possible to outrank the big guys in natural search if you create your landing page/ website around a long-tail keyword that gets a decent amount of clicks (500 or so a month) and a smaller number of competing pages (6,000 -10,000).

Secondly, it’s about analyzing your competition.  After you find a decent keyword that meets these requirements, you analyze the top natural ranking websites for this keyword.  You try to spot weaknesses in these websites that you can exploit, which will make it easier for you to outrank them.  Things like having the keyword in the URL, the Title, and in h1 tags; the number of inbound links, whether it’s in Yahoo Directory, and so on.   If you find a long tail keyword that matches the search and competition criteria, and find that three or more of the top websites have weaknesses that you can exploit, you’ve found your window to success.

The next step is to create a website around the keyword, find relevant affiliate offers (ClickBank, Commission Junction, Pepperjam, Shareasale, Hydra, AzoogleAds, etc.) and employ relentless SEO into it.  Watch it climb in natural search, and you’ll start seeing clicks on your affiliate links.

You will also need to work on your site’s conversion rate.  Do A/B split testing on its headlines, fine tune your copy, experiment with graphics and position of graphics, and so on.  Check your server logs to see where your traffic is coming from, and use this info to “work it” more.

That’s basically it.  To recap, CB2.0 says to focus on long-tail keywords associated with a monetizeable sector (one that has a decent number of potential affiliate offers) that have low competition and decent amount of searches each month.  Create a website/blog around said keyword; preferably using it in your URL.  Embed it with affiliate offers.  Then, pour on the SEO– article marketing, blog posting, getting inbound links, etc.  Play around with headlines, graphics, and copy to get the highest conversion rate possible.  Rinse and Repeat– create one of these sites a month, and wind up with an empire of sites that collectively bring in $thousands a month for you on autopilot.  Best thing about it– NO PAY PER CLICK COSTS.  Just the cost of your time.

By the way, the software the CB2.0 system highly recommends is Market Samurai.  It does all the keyword analysis I mentioned here.

So, what are you waiting for– get to work!