Affiliate Marketing, What Next?

Posted by SEO Dave on January 15th, 2007 at 06:43pm

I don’t consider myself an affiliate marketer per se, but have drifted towards affiliate marketing as I’ve used my SEO skills to make money online. So I’m no affiliate marketing guru, just a guy who is very good at SEO and likes to make money online while sleeping

Currently Google hates almost anything that’s affiliate, especially when the content used is that supplied by the affiliate merchants. I have over 50 Amazon affiliate stores (use their XML datafeed) that at one point (about 4-6 months after creating them) pulled in about 25,000 visitors per day and it looked like within a year those sites would sell over half a million dollars worth of Amazon stock making me ~$50K a year from Amazon and a similar amount from Google AdSense!

Unfortunately a year or so on Google had filtered/penalized near enough all the Amazon affiliate sites and so my plans to retire in a few years and live of affiliate/AdSense income have been dashed on (by) the Google rocks

They still make money, but not enough to call them highly successful, lucky to see $1,500 cheques from Amazon now and AdSense is not what it was (still worth maintaining them).

I looked on affiliate and AdSense income as free money, meaning never expected to make much and never planned to put a lot of effort into it for example I used to give all affiliate revenue to my wife to spend on the family for days out and other fun stuff. But after experiencing the power of affiliate content I’m putting a LOT more time into it.

Recently bought a script that uses an affiliate datafeed to create a ringtone site. I optimised the script (SEO), converted it to search engine friendly URLs (mod_rewrite) and added a nice template. Put it in a sub-folder of one of my older sites and added a few links (enough to make the main page around PR5). About 8 weeks in it’s seeing about 1,500 to 2,000 visitors per day (most from Google) and is making from affiliate/AdSense revenue about £10 ($18) a day. So if it stays this way that one script installation will make around £3,500 (~$6,500) a year.

I could easily create a site like this a week using various datafeeds, but I’m wary because of my Amazon experience.

So does anyone reading this have any ideas to move from a Google hated affiliate marketer to a loved by Google webmaster?

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14 Comments for Affiliate Marketing, What Next?

1. SEO Dave | April 4th, 2007 at 4:53 am

Update on the ringtone script mentioned above.

Three months in it was making the equivalent (if I average out a weeks revenue and extrapolate) of about £4,500 ($9,000) a year (direct affiliate and AdSense income), but was then quickly banned/penalized/downgraded in Google to a trickle of traffic on the 20th/21st of February 2007 (approx. 3 months live).

I expected this to happen eventually and after a little research I see most of my affiliate sites (on old sites) went this way. Great performance first 3-6 months then the Google death penalty.

I suppose I could keep creating new affiliate sites to replace the old banned ones: keeping a steady stream of affiliate revenue (£20K a year from this wouldn’t be difficult to achieve) but suspect if I did this the important sites within our network (links) would eventually fall foul of Google and it’s not worth the risk!

So stumped on how to proceed with affiliate marketing, and based on the lack of response to this post so have my readers
2. Don | April 25th, 2007 at 10:52 am

Dave,

The ringtone-affiliate space has become one of the most competitive, as well as one of the most “regulated” by Google, after Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney) began publicizing his amazing success a couple of years ago.

Shoemoney apparently has success running massive PPC campaigns, using hundreds of thousands of keyword phrases across several PPC platforms, and profits by relentlessly tracking the results and eliminating non-performers. He’s quantified and automated his system to very high level, according to his blog and podcast reports, and has poured thousands of hours of work into it. So, it hasn’t been a set-and-forget system, which is what you, and everyone else, would like aff mktg to be.

I think the long-term, Google-friendly, strategy is to drive people to your “money” site via blog posts, articles submitted to article directories, and low-cost PPC ads. Inbound links from as many social-networking sites and forum posts as possible is also part of this strategy. It can be run as a continuing, low-level-of-effort campaign, but it still can’t be a fire-and-forget effort. I think that door closed around 2005, after some people had made enough money that the rest of the world started to get interested, and Google started slamming the open doors.
3. Don | April 25th, 2007 at 10:58 am

Just after submitting my comment, I ran across this excellent forum thread discussing why so few affiliate marketers seem to be successful, and whether the successful few keep all their success a secret.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/advertising/3318239.htm
4. SEO Dave | July 6th, 2007 at 2:47 am

Something weird happened June 27th, 28th and 29th.

One of my Amazon stores recovered in Google over those few days, for no reason AdSense income jumped to $90 a day (from one site). Wasn’t click fruad since also a similar increase in Amazon sales as well.

Back to normal now($10 a day if I’m lucky), but looks like for a few days Google gave it the rankings it deserves: deserves based on SEO, content, links etc… and ignoring the fact it’s affiliate.

Very strange though a nice $500ish (Amazon and AdSense income added together) extra for the kitty

David
5. Roland | July 30th, 2007 at 8:51 pm

Hi Dave - I read your two blog posts on this subject with great fascination. Have you tried a combo content page forwarded to a product page?

I.e. use a google friendly content page to pull in lots of traffic. That page then uses a bunch of links to connect to affiliate product pages with a Google No Cache/No Follow Meta Tag on it.

Also - How many Google Adsense ads can you have on a page before Google claims it is affiliate marketing junk?
6. SEO Dave | July 31st, 2007 at 12:02 am

Hey Roland,

I have tried the Google friendly content that links to affiliate content (something similar to your idea anyway) and it works well on a page by page basis.

The only problem with this marketing approach is it takes a lot of work, so you don’t benefit from the thousands of easy SERPs you can get when adding say a 10,000 page Amazon affiliate store (couple of hours work).

Basically if Google didn’t ban Amazon affiliate sites you could easily pull in 10K extra visitors a day in under 8 weeks to an Amazon store IF it was added to an existing site that was doing quite well (doesn’t work with new sites).

To match this you’d have to create thousands of content rich pages that are unique. It’s not worth it for the revenue from Amazon sales (under 10%), now if you can find affiliate products that give a better return (30%+) then it might be worth it.

What I’d like to try is find a struggling online retailer with a lot of products and move their shop onto one of my sites that’s doing well. Based on what happens when I’ve added an affiliate store to these sites I’d expect almost instant success (thousands of new visitors a day).

So far not found anyone with a large product range that’s interested in the idea!

With regards your AdSense question, Google doesn’t work that way. The reason why affiliate sites are banned isn’t because they run AdSense ads, but because they use duplicate content. I have Amazon stores that don’t have AdSense ads (have no ads) and they also got banned.

David
7. joe somerville | November 28th, 2007 at 2:48 am

great blog — i like that you use real numbers and cut through the bull — i have been trying to make a lving on the web for a few years now and have invested much time and more money to do so.

i allow restaurants to advertise on my web sites - using video and e-mail and listings and the restaurants pay me in food — i take the food they owe me and sell it at 50% of the menu value — i have been doing this for 8 years.

i would love to know how to get ranking on google for the key words atlanta restaurants -

any help or suggestions welcome — thanks again - joe somerville
8. Work At Home Tom | December 2nd, 2007 at 8:46 pm

Regarding Google Adsense… I have also noticed the fact that if you have a lot of scraped material (duplicate articles) on your blog it may get banned.People don´t get the point that the income should be a result of great content.
9. Tom at The Home Business Archive | December 9th, 2007 at 9:55 pm

I think you can have 3 Google Adsense ads per page, but you need to have good content.It is quite hard to understand how the system really works when they change the rules all the time and not for the better.
10. Emmanuel Mba | December 12th, 2007 at 1:50 am

Dave,
“The reason why affiliate sites are banned isn’t because they run AdSense ads, but because they use duplicate content. I have Amazon stores that don’t have AdSense ads (have no ads) and they also got banned”.
An extreemly useful discussion provided and good advise. Keep up the good work
11. Frank | January 2nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Dave -

What’s your take on pay per play audio ads? It seems to me that, for better or worse, this form of advertising was inevitable.

Thanks.
12. Ivan | February 27th, 2008 at 10:14 am

‘… nowadays search engines reward sweat-of-the-brow work on content that bait natural links given by choice …’ - excerpt from a Google Webmaster Central Blog.

It’s all about publishing unique, fresh, valuable content as often as possible, plus key phrase optimization, plus one way back links, plus using multiple marketing channels through email, RSS, blogs, forums, web2.0 … The days of the banners and the easy money have long gone. Even AdSense profits will get tougher to earn.

I enjoyed the time spent on your blog, Dave.
13. T.M. Harris | February 29th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

Affiliate marketing is not hard at all, and I’m glad to see that you’re using your skills in SEO to do some damage.

I’ve been doing the same, just writing up good articles on my blog, and then tagging, pinging and getting backlinks for it.

It’s working for me, so I hope it works for you pal.

Keep in touch,
T.M. Harris
14. Robert Jan | April 18th, 2008 at 8:27 pm

@Ivan; I agree. It’s about fresh relevant new articles. On the key phrase optimization I have to say that I seem to be walking on the edge too many times. One day on page one, the next on page 7.

Guess I’m one of many who would love to have a peak on Google’s kitchen from time to time.. :S