Affiliate Marketing - gonna start today!

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neednocash

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Dec 20, 2007
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Hi there,

so I'm new to affiliate marketing. I've read few ebooks (not too much) and am spending some time on researching now. I have found some nice topics / niches I would like to promote.

Ok let's start with an example: My idea is to promote mobile phones. I have found a shop that is selling mobile phones and signed up with their affiliate program through CJ.com.

I also have made a keyword list for PPC advertising (google adwords etc.).

Ok, now I need your help...

Now I need to create a landing page, right? But should I place the products on my site or should I just write some "the best mobile phone on this planet - and so cheap! ... ... to buy 'motorola mobile phones - click here'" ?

What about direct linking to the shop (eg. mobile phone cell phones sony at mobilephone.com)??? Is this a good idea??

Ok, how is the standard procedure for this kind of affiliate marketing. Please advise!!!
 


#1 - Watch it with CJ.com - Not all (in fact very few if any) of their merchants track in real time. What this means is you could lose a whole lot of money before you ever figure out your not getting any sales.

#2 - Start on Yahoo, its a bit easier to get things going. After you get the hang of that move to Google.

#3 - Youll only be able to direct link to the shop if they themselves or another affiliate isnt already advertising them on the search engine. If they are and you still want to direct link you will need to buy a domain and either iframe or redirect to the merchant.

Hope that helped.
 
Welcome aboard! :)

neednocash said:
Now I need to create a landing page, right? But should I place the products on my site or should I just write some "the best mobile phone on this planet - and so cheap! ... ... to buy 'motorola mobile phones - click here'" ?
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Both!

Make a few versions of your page where you target people who are just looking around for where to buy and what models to buy. Hint: put up some tips, recommendations, reviews, etc.

Then, also set up a section of your site where you have each product have its own page (or several related phones on one page). You can do this by using the datafeed from the CJ merchant. Get a free or cheap script that will pull items from the database and put them into your template. Send traffic from people who are looking for specific models to these pages. ;)

You wanna make sure to cover all bases and all types of traffic the niche can get.
 
I'm seriously impressed that you managed to snag mobilephone.com
If you can get some good traffic on the site, and the marketing doesn't work out for you, it may be worth considering a flip... Check out some of the domainer forums, like DomainState or DNForum to see what a good generic TLD can go for (pizza.com just went for something like $2m)

Back to the marketing:

It depends on how much effort you want to put into something like this. If you're doing it right, more effort = more money.
ImagesandWords has a great way of doing things with his suggestion.
Personally, I'd do a blog (or just scrape some other people's or magazines), about the said phones. Make it look like you're getting all them phone models as testers, so you've actually tested the phones out.
This gives you more cred with the people buying the phones. The multiple pages smacks of too much effort (at least to a cynic like me), which makes you look like a corporate shill... It's a really hard one to know where to draw the line on that.
Customers may end up back linking to you as well, which is a great way of raising your status in Google for free.
It also makes Google love you, as regularly adding new content to a site generally gets a better page rank.
 
HarveyJ said:
I'm seriously impressed that you managed to snag mobilephone.com
If you can get some good traffic on the site, and the marketing doesn't work out for you, it may be worth considering a flip... Check out some of the domainer forums, like DomainState or DNForum to see what a good generic TLD can go for (pizza.com just went for something like $2m)
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I don't think he actually owns mobilephone.com.
 
I'm just jumping in here real quick, be very careful with CJ. Maybe it's just me but I had a very bad first experience with them, besides their got awful non real time tracking, you can't get ahold of any AM for any offer it seems. I think I did get screwed, but no one seems to want to take action - so fuck them.

There are plenty of good Affiliate companys out there, join a couple reputable ones and don't waste your time with those dildos.
 
narsticle said:
#1 - Watch it with CJ.com - Not all (in fact very few if any) of their merchants track in real time. What this means is you could lose a whole lot of money before you ever figure out your not getting any sales.
Click to expand...
Actually, most merchants track in real time (reporting can be 2 hours off, based on transaction reports that post approximately every hour). Merchants that are not real-time pixel merchants are denoted by listing "batch" at the bottom of a merchant's description. None of the many merchants I current work with on CJ batch sales, and transactions appear in a timely manner.
Rage9 said:
I'm just jumping in here real quick, be very careful with CJ. Maybe it's just me but I had a very bad first experience with them, besides their got awful non real time tracking, you can't get ahold of any AM for any offer it seems. I think I did get screwed, but no one seems to want to take action - so fuck them.
Click to expand...
That will vary from program to program, but you can always contact them beforehand to judge responsiveness and get a phone number. I have the phone number for the AM of each program that I promote on any sort of scale. It's surprisingly easy to get a phone number when you have a value proposition, and aren't just bitching at them or asking stupid questions.

CJ merchants have been my largest consistent revenue source for the past 2 years, and I can't say that I find anything different between running an offer from Azoogle versus running an offer found on CJ.
 
I'm fairly new to PPC marketing and have just been doing content sites with affiliate links.... Anyway, what's the big deal with real time tracking? If it's delayed by 2 hours is that really that big of a deal?
 
thesilly1 said:
I'm fairly new to PPC marketing and have just been doing content sites with affiliate links.... Anyway, what's the big deal with real time tracking? If it's delayed by 2 hours is that really that big of a deal?
Click to expand...
It is jwhen you're spending $250/hr on PPC and seeing no leads...
 
thesilly1 said:
I'm fairly new to PPC marketing and have just been doing content sites with affiliate links.... Anyway, what's the big deal with real time tracking? If it's delayed by 2 hours is that really that big of a deal?
Click to expand...

For some campaigns its a HUGE deal, for others, not at all.

The real issue here is that theres no reason why it shouldn't be real time. I've seen tiny networks that have real-time, and I've seen huge networks that have real-time, then I have seen huge networks with 48 hour delays.

The cost of bandwidth / storeage is so little now-a-days that there really is no excuse for a network to not offer it.

If you can get inhouse tracking, thats really optimal. Not that I have ever done this, but it seems that white label sites with inhouse tracking are what do the best, and i believe its largely bc of the accuracy/efficiency with which they track their marketing efforts.
 
dogfighter said:
I almost spit coffee everywhere just now.
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Yea, if I owned mobilephone.com I wouldnt be trying to use it as a ppc-campaign domain.

Sell the sucker to verizon, att, whoever for several mil and invest that into your affiliatemarketing efforts.

or just collect parking revenue which would possibly be in the x,xxx,xxx annual range.

If only we had a WF time machine. We could all go back and snag up all the dictionary term domains we wanted and be filthy stinkin rich. :mad:
 
KunkVentures said:
Yea, if I owned mobilephone.com I wouldnt be trying to use it as a ppc-campaign domain.

Sell the sucker to verizon, att, whoever for several mil and invest that into your affiliatemarketing efforts.

or just collect parking revenue which would possibly be in the x,xxx,xxx annual range.

If only we had a WF time machine. We could all go back and snag up all the dictionary term domains we wanted and be filthy stinkin rich. :mad:
Click to expand...

My programmer is in his 40s, grew up in Russia. Told me that he almost registered vodka.com a long time ago, but didn't want to pay th $80 or whatever it was for reg fee.

I think vodka.com sold last year for like $4 Mil.
 
I also think creating a blog would do wonders for your business - search engines LOVE them! And like everyone has said, be careful which affiliate programs you join. CJ is not the only game in town! There are plenty of good affiliate programs out there, just research them thoroughly before joining.

I think you're doing a great job just starting out - researching, studying, etc. Many new affiliates just get their link and start throwing it out there, hoping someone will buy. This DOES NOT work! It takes time and patience to set up your programs and market them correctly. Looks like you're getting off to a great start!

Good luck
 
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