I just got this question from Paul who is in the process of selecting a domain name for his new affiliate site.

Hi Ben, I’ve been a SFP member for quite a while however and i’m not proud to say have never taken action. But today is a new day and i’m moving forward with SFP. Got a question though. I’m going through various CJ affiliate links, some I’m approved for and some I’ve been declined. No problem.

When selecting a domain name is it better to have the affiliate name as part of the domain or have the category as part of the domain. As an example. I’m approved for ediets.com Do i select a domain such as easyediets.com or fatlossdiets.com ? One has the affilliate name. the other does not.

Another example I’m approved for several web hosting affiliates, lets use blue hosting.  Do i use bluehostwebsolutions.com or easywebhosting.com ?

I think you get my point.

Any help would be great.
Thanks

Paul.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the note. I like how you are approaching your domain name selection.

To be frank, either approach works. I have sites that have domains with the brand in them as well as the more generic themed domains.

One thing to be careful of is if the advertiser has a policy against using its branded name in your domain. Many of the advertisers don’t like affiliates to use their brand name in the domain. However, other advertisers are ok with it. Sometimes, even if their policy prohibits use of the brand name in the domain, they will make an exception for you.

For instance, let’s say that you purchase edietsreview.com where you post real customer reviews and testimonials on the site. The advertiser may be ok with that – and actually encourage you – so long as they are represented in a positive light.

I hope this helps.
-Ben

Lots of people ask about the health of the credit card affiliate market. So few people have good enough credit to get cards these days, banks are tightening lending, and fewer people have jobs. All of these things may have certainly changed the industry. It is different. The easy money is not as easy but there are still opportunities.

Here is my answer to a question from a member with a credit card site who used to make good money but it has dried up.

Ben,

When I was making money it was a different site that had only all of the American Express credit cards I could find. Most commissions were from the Gold Card.
But, the commissions dropped off before I took the other site down. It made good money from June 2007 – October 2007.

It became very difficult to keep updating the offers so I moved to the template driven site that I have now. I think maybe I am finding trouble finding keyword phrases
to drive traffic to such a wide variety of credit cards and keep the bid price low.

Plus, I asked Dave about the Google Adwords tracking and he said that the credit card company(s) would have to add the tracking code for each card separately, I wonder
if they would be willing to do that on such a large scale? Would I be better off creating sites with fewer focused products?

I know there is at least $20,000 per month to be had from credit cards, correct me if I’m wrong. It just seems like a great product to offer since there is nothing to purchase.

My Answer:

Hi Rick,

Yes – you are correct! Credit cards are a great market. Actually, I’m sure you can do more than $20,000 per month. Call up your rep at NCS and they’ll tell you they have some 100k+ per month earners.

Yes also to your question about being specific. The more specific you can be, the better. With respect to credit cards, this would be my suggestion:

- Find some specific niche brand keywords and drive those people to the relevant landing page directly. (I assume you’re not sending all your traffic right to your home page, right?!)

For instance, send your “Delta skymiles card” people directly to that page. I know you have several cards on the same url, but perhaps you can use anchor text to get them in front of the right offer. (not sure if you can incorporate anchor text into the destination url, but the bottom line is that there needs to be a match here when the person reaches your website)

Trust me – this method works!

- I also would focus on long tail and perhaps go in yahoo and bing only for now. You get some bargain clicks and don’t have to rebuild when google slaps you with a bad quality score.

With this approach you would go very broad – many long tail keywords for many products. Set the bids low.

I assume what will happen is you’ll have at least 3-4 good performing “mini-niches” here. You can start with that and then build from there.

Where you go from there is up to you…you can build out other sites, expand kw list, or do another product altogether.

There are TONS of cpa offers other than credit cards – take a look at Hydra Media and see the many, many cpa offers they have.

This morning I got an email from my rep at The Hydra Network. I learned they have now included the new (vague and ambiguous) FTC guidelines on testimonials into their terms and conditions.

This means that ignoring those guidelines could get your affiliate account suspended and/or forfeit your commissions! Ouch!

Here are the new ts and cs:

• Advertisers may no longer tout unusual or extraordinary results in testimonials by including a disclaimer such as “results not typical”.  Ads that feature a consumer and convey his/her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case need to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect, in addition to being truthful.
• “Material connections” between advertisers and endorsers — connections that consumers would not expect — must be disclosed.  This means that if an endorser receives payments (e.g. a CPA payment from Hydra for a campaign promoting that product), or even free product or services, from an advertiser or the seller of the product or service, that fact must be disclosed.
• A blogger, reviewer or “word-of-mouth” marketer who receives payment (including CPA payments from Hydra for promotion of a product), or even free product samples, to review a product or service is considered an “endorser” and, therefore, must disclose that a material connection with the seller of the product exists.
• A paid endorsement — like any other advertisement — is deceptive if it makes any false or misleading claims.
• Both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement — or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers.
• If an endorser claims to be an expert with respect to the endorsement message, then he or she must be qualified with sufficient expertise to offer the endorsement.