Specifically, an average day for Greg was about $50,000 per DAY in affiliate sales with very healthy margins.

I was fortunate enough to spend two days learning his methods and have learned and executed a tremendous number of the same strategies. The best part about Greg is that he has not let his super-affiliate status get to his head.

He’s down to earth and happy to share all of his hard earned knowledge. Here is one of his recent video tutorials:

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

Hi Ben and Dave,

After going through your training material, I find myself in a catch 22 situation. You mention that I need to register a domain name but I must first browse through the site ‘cj.com’ to find out what I’d like to market thus enabling an appropriate domain name.
The problem is that cj.com won’t allow you to browse their site the way you’ve shown me on the video unless you register – and part of the registration process is telling them your domain name.

As a result, I feel stuck.

Please help – Russ
Hi Russ,

I understand the dilemma you are in. Here are a few suggestions for you.

You can always select a domain name now based upon the overall niche you see yourself getting involved in. In other words, you don’t need to know exactly which company or which product you are going to promote today in order to select a domain name that suits a general niche.

For instance, if you believe you may want to promote language learning software, perhaps you choose a fitting domain name for that niche.

You can always add or change your domain name at a later date too. One good thing about doing business online is that you can make these quick changes. It isn’t like selecting a store location and moving in.

The other option is to open a Commission Junction account without a website. You can do this by indicating you are the owner of yahoo.com or aol.com, etc. in the fields where it asks you for your website information. This will usually at least get your account opened up with Commission Junction. (You will eventually need your real website to get approved for the individual programs.)

Remember too that you can browse affiliate programs without a Commission Junction account at all. There are hundreds of affiliate networks just like it you can use to do your market research. Otherwise, you can simply browse stores and products online. Once you find a store you like, search for their affiliate program information. Most stores post this information somewhere on their website.

Best,
Ben

I’m encountering the following barrier:

Whenever I wish to review products/brands offered on a new affiliate
partner site, I cannot view them unless I sign up.  To do that, I need
an active website with a history of traffic and relevance.  I have one
site active, but I still get denied.  Then, I move on and try another
affiliate partner site.

So how can I get started and build an attractive site if I don’t know
what products/brands that a potential affiliate partner program
offers?  Just keep moving on to different partner programs until I get
accepted.

I do belong to CJ.  So, should I just stick with that program until I
build a successful website to demonstrate to others?  Receiving
commissions so long after the fact is not attractive.  So, I’m more
interested in partner programs with shorter payout time frames.

I believe that most new affiliates run into this problem. To
understand this problem, let me give you a 30 second history of
affiliate marketing:

You may have heard people refer to affiliates as “publishers.” The
reason why is because the earliest affiliate marketers were
“publishers” in the sense that they published content about a certain
topic, e.g. news, hobbies, etc.

The publishers were publishers before they were affiliates.

Advertisers knew that the  publishers already had traffic and tons of content and
basically purchased advertising space from the publishers.

Affiliate Marketing has evolved since then of course. Nonetheless,
many advertisers still expect the same standards when they accept new affiliates.

In other words, advertisers expect you to already have good relevant
content on your website which matches their offers. This makes sense
for those new affiliates who are fairly sure about the field you want to
get into.

If you want to quickly become “legitimate” in the eyes of the
advertiser, here are some ways to beef up your website and have a
better shot at getting approved:

1. Post articles on your site. You can get free article feeds from a
lot of the article directories so long as you leave the resource boxes
intact and give proper credit to the author;

2. Post relevant videos from Youtube and other video sites. These
sites offer an “embed code” so you can cut and paste a video in no
time flat

3. Post testimonials about a product or service. You can use your own
or see what other people are saying online

Finally, one more tip on getting approved:

See whether the offer is available outside of Commission Junction. An
advertiser is often partnered with several networks. Sometimes I’ve
been rejected for an offer in Cj, but approved in a different network
like ncsreportng.com.

Oh yeah – make certain you always include all the necessary
formalities on your site, e.g. privacy policy, contact info, etc.

And if all else fails, you can always go out of your way to get an
advertiser’s attention. (I used “snail mail” before to get the
attention of an advertiser who was totally inundated with applications
and it worked!)

The first product I promoted was a video game
called “Halo.” I’m not a “gamer” but I
heard that the market was hot for this game so I
gave it a go.

Big Mistake.

I did get a sale or two….but dumped a few
hundred dollars in the process.

For a guy working on a shoestring budget, this
hurt. Nonetheless, I kept plodding forward.

My problem was that I had no idea what to make my
websites about! I designed close to 300 different
web pages without a whole lot of success.

(My friends and family secretly wondered when I would
stop pissing away all my time and money on this
Internet pipe dream.)

I refused to quit.

Then something big happened one day in March of
2006. FINALLY! I found something that worked. At
the time it was rare to get more than one sale in
an entire day. However, with this product I got 3
sales inside an hour!

I remember checking my stats and seeing those
sales and it was a thrill. I felt like I had won
the damn Olympics!

There was a good reason why that product worked
while others were utter failures. (The thing that
worked was a financial product that I had used myself and I knew how it
worked inside and out.) I put all that  information on the website and the people loved it…which is why I got the flood of sales.

Let’s recap as to why this worked while so many
other products failed:

First, I knew the product inside and out.
(Nowadays I don’t promote ANY product without
using it first.)

This is a really good idea. It is very difficult
to promote a product that you haven’t used
yourself.

Your customers are pretty good at sniffing out BS
so if you try to fake it, you’ll be facing an
uphill battle.

On the other hand, if you know a product
intimately, you can share your experiences about
that product and your customers will actually
feel a bond with you.

For example, I am creating a new site where I am
promoting a product called the “Kindle” which
is a hand held reading device. I like to read
books, try to read 2 books per month, and I feel
like the Kindle is the “bees knees” for
people who like to read.

I take the thing everywhere I go and I find
myself telling random strangers how cool it is
and how they need to get one.

The Kindle is the Bees Knees for people who like to read!

From my experience I am able to tell you all the
following things about the Kindle:

-    I can tell you that it takes approximately 60
seconds to download a 200 page book

-    I can tell you how to transfer your ebooks and
mp3 files from your pc to the Kindle

-    I can tell you that the battery lasts forever
– but only if you disable the wireless device

I could go on with dozens of little tid bits of
information which you won’t find on the
manufacturer’s website. However, potential
customers LOVE this info.

Ok back to the story. The second reason why I
started getting sales on that financial product
is that I worked PERSONALITY into the website.

This financial product was for people with a large amount of student
loans. So, I told my story about my student loans and how it was difficult
to pay them back since my salary was so low, but
then I talked about the company and how they helped consolidate
the loans.

People responded to this PERSONALITY because it
was coming from another person – not a big
corporation.

Do you see how this works?
Who would you trust more – a friend
who used a product you might buy, or
the company who is trying to get your money?

With that being said, if you’re struggling to
find your place as an Affiliate Marketer,
remember two pieces of advice:

1. Consider promoting those products you know
well or have a real interest in (if you think you might
promote a product you have NOT used, buy and try
it first. Just use your own affiliate link )

2. Work personality – Your Personality – into
the website This type of advice is just a snapshot of the
material we covered in Chicago.

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 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.

When I started all this I did not anticipate becoming a salesman, so this is requiring a total retooling of how I have to think in regards to promoting my site

Thanks
Bill
My Response:

Hi Bill –

Glad you enjoyed the conference. We really enjoy sharing the new tips and tricks we learn from attending live events and our own trial and error.
First, the two ad networks we mentioned on the call (Pulse360.com and Marchex.com) are ad networks. They are not like CJ or Share-a-Sale. CJ and share-a-sale are affiliate networks. Affiliate networks are “middle men” between the affiliate and the advertiser. In other words, you use affiliate networks to get access to new offers.

The Ad Networks including Marchex and Pulse360 are companies you can use to get TRAFFIC to your website. They do not have affiliate offers.

Second, we always suggest that you make just one thing work and then figure out how to multiply that same income. That has been the success model that we – and other highly successful affiliates – use to ramp up their income.

This way is far easier than trying to make a whole bunch of unrelated offers work at the same time.

For instance, let’s say that you find one offer that is working on your website and you are making $50 per day. There are dozens of ways you can multiply that income. Here are just a few:

- open new campaigns in all the search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN.

- set up content network campaigns in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

- consider different ad formats including image/banner and video ads

- set up an autoresponder sequence where you offer a free gift. Monetize the list with a related affiliate offer.

As for the other offers you already have set up, there really is no need to do anything with those campaigns. You can always come back to them later on when you are ready.

To the layperson, the fight looked clear: Brandon Vera beat the crap out of Randy Couture. Most fans reached the same conclusion which was evidenced by the crowd clearing out of the arena even before the surprising decision was announced.

ben-moskel-vicki-irvin-kim-davis

The judge’s clear bias towards selling more tickets for future fights reminded me of when I worked a “real” job.

I had no control. It didn’t matter how hard I worked or how many hours I invested in the law firm. The pay was the same. The bonuses were still pathetic. I was still expected to show up bright and early every day and never to request more than two weeks vacation.

Affiliate Marketing has given me the ability to regain control of those things.

I can put up several new websites and expect to add profit to my bottom line. I can add keywords to a profitable campaign and make more money.

The bottom line is that you can finally regain some control in this crazy politically driven World.