Affiliate Marketing: Stop Lowballing

If you’ve ever read much into affiliate marketing or read some courses or other informational material, you’ve probably been told to find your niche and get a domain name based around an exact match to the keywords you’re targeting, based on search volumes published by the Google AdWords Tool.

Let me be the first to tell you, good luck with finding an exact match domain name that is available for normal registration, whose exact match search volume is higher than a thousand or two. They’re out there, but they are very obscure, and to be frank, it’s a waste of time anyway to put hours and hours of work, and perhaps investing into advertising, SEO, marketing, etc., based on a domain name with low search volume, if you’re taking an EMD approach.

The trick is to stop lowballing when it comes to picking out your domain name. Stop scrounging around low search volume keywords and find one that looks great, with an exact match domain that is available via auction or buy it now price that isn’t astronomical. I would say $300 or less is a good range. The reason is that you’re just starting out, but consider this: If you were doing business in a physical setting, would you buy an office suite tucked away in a part of town that very few people frequent, or would you try for a nice storefront with heavy traffic?

Now I know, this means more competition, however, simply by having a more prime piece of real estate, all of your efforts are going to go further. For instance, think of posting a link to your website on a forum, or just the action itself, of a potential visitor mousing over your link and seeing your domain name. How likely is someone to click http://www.thepoint.com versus http://www.gettothepointalready.com? Obviously, if it’s a long tail keyword EMD, perhaps that appeals to them, however, getting to the point appeals to them too, and makes your “brand” look much more trustworthy.

A catchy domain name is good too, however, we’re about to start talking about traffic, so unless you’re going to be doing some serious SEO, some other considerations need to be made as to how you will get traffic. 

One thing that people don’t consider much is type-in traffic, meaning, someone just says “I wonder what’s at http://www.whatever.com.” Just based on the keyword phrase, they’ll go check it out. While this isn’t the norm, and you won’t get a ton of traffic this way, most likely, it will lead to some traffic, if you have a shorter domain name that is spot on for your target audience.

What I’m getting at is this: if you’re not ranking highly in Google, and you’re not doing any other promotion of your website, type-in traffic is all you have. Of course, you’d want to do much more than that, but when you’re starting out and you don’t have big G sending organic searchers to your website, or may never reach that point, consider that type-in traffic is free.

For instance, if you are doing PPC advertising and paying, say, even a low amount such as $0.10 per visit to your website, every type-in visitor you receive is basically $0.10 earned, in a manner of thinking. I’m not saying type-ins are going to be a huge source of traffic, but, it can be a nice added stream of traffic, if your domain name is chosen wisely.

Furthermore, having a domain name that is higher up in the hierarchy of keyword group(s) you’re targeting allows you to go after long tail with increased power, since not ALL of the long tail keywords are part of your domain name, but some will be, and they’ll be echoed in your actual page / post URL.

Also, consider the value of your website, if you decided to put it up on the open market one day. Lots of factors contribute to what it should go for, and what it will actually sell for, however, if you have the same stats and revenue on two websites, with the only difference being a lengthy long tail domain name, I’ll virtually guarantee you that the shorter domain name will sell for more, simply because there is more opportunity for higher search volumes that match the domain name.

Also, from a branding standpoint, it’s much easier to brand a shorter domain name, than a long tail domain name, and easier to advertise it using methods that are a bit outside of the box.

For instance, if you’ve got a really great domain name that is only two to three words, you could even get into image watermarking. Simply add a solid color bar to the bottom of all of your images, with your domain address clearly posted within that bar. Then, whenever you share that image off site, you’re putting your domain name in someone’s face, and if it’s short enough, they just might remember it, and type it in, even if there is no link to it.

Also, this saves you a lot of trouble, as you’re not posting a link to your website. The audience, and the moderators at wherever you are posting said pictures probably wouldn’t even know you are the owner of that site, unless you make it apparent, however, what I’m getting at is that you open a lot of opportunities to advertise your brand that just wouldn’t work that well if you have some long drawn out domain name, and you don’t have to be allowed to post a text link.

Additionally, images are becoming more and more useful in the world of affiliate marketing, through the sharing of images. If you can get a few watermarked images to go semi-viral in your niche, you could be looking at some pretty nice traffic. You could probably even take a shot at creating a MEME with the hopes of going viral, with your watermark appended to the image. 

Keep in mind to watermark tastefully. You want it to look professional and not overpowering or intrusive. You want it to add to the image, not take away. Avoid posting the watermark over the actual image itself.

Using this approach, even without big G, you could realistically draw traffic to your site, with only investing time instead of money. The money was invested pre-launch, in the quality of your domain name. Your business should be something you’re proud of, even if it’s just one of many affiliate marketing websites. 

You will feel more positive about investing into the website, since for one, you spent more money on it, and two, it’s a more prominent domain.  Gauge your own level of excitement when you’re searching for domain names. If you’re not excited about it, how do you expect to keep working on it for months and years to come to ensure it’s profitable? Also, if you’re not excited about it, how do you expect your visitors to be excited about it?

Consider how many long tail domains you’ve purchased for cheap (if you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer), and look at what wound up happening with them. There’s probably a good chance that quite a few of them, you never even got around to building, or monetizing, or maybe you just let them expire when their registration came up for renewal, etc. Stop wasting time and money jumping from one thing to the next, and focus on quality first, and quantity second. Quantity is still very important, however, quality should be first.

If you’re putting hours and hours into domain names that are long shots to start with, think of how far you could go with a quality, high search volume, exact match domain name. Think about how you would feel working on a domain like that, versus one of the cheap long tail, long shot domain names you’ve worked on in the past.

Even if you’re not spending a couple hundred bucks, even spending $50 on a domain name should allow you to up the ante for yourself, and result in a much more reputable domain name.

You’ve spent $50 on much worse investments haven’t you? Ever purchased a crappy info product? I think that’s enough said.

Give it a try, and I’m sure you will feel more energized about working on the site, will have a brighter outlook (which is very important), and you’ll be more heavily invested from the word go since you paid a pretty penny for the domain, rather than using a 99 cent promo code.

A Fresh Twist to Affiliate Marketing

If you’ve ever ventured into affiliate marketing, you already know the routine:

Pick a product to become an affiliate of, create a website with related content, and insert affiliate banners and links, enticing visitors to click on those links, and hopefully make a purchase so that you can earn a commission.

Honestly, some more considerations need to be made up front and you should be realistic with yourself as to how successful you can be with your approach.

First of all, read the terms of service of the affiliate program you are signing up with, and if you have any questions about those terms and conditions, contact their affiliate support department and get a clear cut answer before taking any action that could wind up getting you banned from the affiliate program. Why? First of all, if you get banned, you’re not going to get a payout, regardless of how many customers you brought them, and secondly, if the affiliate program provides for residual commissions when the person renews their service, etc., then you are really taking a big risk with what could be a good bit of residual income.

Once you know the dos and don’ts of the affiliate program, review their payment options and how long of a waiting period there is before a given commission clears the probationary “pending” stage and is actually available to be withdrawn. Also, check what the minimum payout amount is.

Now that you have gotten the lay of the land, here’s the twist. Instead of marketing your website online, or hoping to land a top spot in Google for a niche keyword term, advertise the site locally. I know this may sound backwards, but consider that you can actually have an impact locally, much easier than you can with respect to the entire online community. Also, from a niche keyword standpoint, tossing in a city name, or even a state name, may put you in a very easy niche of Google SERP competition. I know that also means a lower amount of exact match keyword searches, but tests have proven that one extra word in an exact match domain doesn’t really have any negative effect. For instance, if your website is “buywidgets.com” or “buywidgetsnow.com,” your website URL still contains all of the words from the search, and if you choose a brand-like URL instead of an exact match approach, the title of your website and internal URLs become the replacement for an exact match domain name.

So, how can you go about marketing locally? Think about the product you are marketing, and create a website in which the affiliate product is needed in tandem with the actual topic matter. For instance, if you create a website with listings of cars for sale, sign up as an affiliate of car insurance companies, and auto loan companies. Then, you can focus on bringing great content to the website for your visitors, instead of your focus being on pushing content about the affiliate product. If someone comes to a site to read about car loans, sure, they might apply for a car loan, but more often, they’re in a “getting educated” mode, not a buying mode. In fact, they probably haven’t even decided upon which car to attempt to purchase, so applying for a loan is a bit out of order. However, if they are browsing car listings, an ad offering an instant decision on an auto loan would be much more appealing, and will probably do fairly well if your traffic is targeted.

Consider your affiliate product, and put yourself in the shoes of your visitor. Ask yourself if you would click the affiliate link on your website, honestly. You don’t have to get too involved in masterminding the chain of events that lead to someone clicking your links, but take a basic walk through of when you personally would be in buying mode for the affiliate product you have to offer, and try to recreate that buying mode for your visitor. By positioning your website, content, and affiliate ads appropriately, you should have a naturally higher click through rate, and conversion rate.

The other great thing about this approach is that you don’t have to rank in Google for whatever it is you’re selling. For instance, consider trying to rank in Google for some keyword centered around auto loans, and then consider the difficulty in ranking for “cars for sale in city” or “cars for sale in state”, something along those lines. Now, you could do the same approach with a city or state name with auto loans, but you get the drift. The idea is to have a website NOT about what you’re selling.

One big mistake people make is what the “gurus” of affiliate marketing push in all of their info products. Pick a niche and an affiliate product, and try to match all of your info up to that affiliate product. While this approach makes sense, people get carried away by only focusing on being an affiliate, and not on providing good content to the visitor. Content is king, remember that.

Taking this approach widens the possibilities for affiliate marketers, because it releases you from the viewpoint that your website and content all have to be centered around your affiliate product. You will come to find that if your content is great, and your affiliate product complements your content well, you’ll get a lot more clicks based on people enjoying your content, then you will by creating an exact match keyword website focused on an affiliate product. People are not stupid, and will understand that you’re just pushing a product, which doesn’t mean you won’t make commissions, but it’s not going to earn you a lot of reputation points with your audience.

By putting the local spin on things, you can find a local audience, and then use traditional marketing methods alongside online marketing methods to increase the number of traffic streams to your website.