Greg is a business owner and expert marketer. Greg recently asked me to join his private marketing mastermind club here in the local Rochester area.

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:

I’ve been following Ken since 2005. In fact, he helped steer me out of my nine to five job with his free Internet marketing material. I’ve been attending his big event each year called The System Seminar. This year, he invited me to share a presentation on what it’s like to be a successful Affiliate Marketer.

This Saturday Ken and I are doing an Affiliate Marketing Q and A. You can call in and ask us anything.

Get the Ben Moskel and Ken McCarthy Call in Details Here

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

Michael Fishman gave a presentation which completely shocked me. I had never heard of Michael Fishman and had no idea what to expect.

Michael is a 20 year veteran direct mail list broker who has been part of the most successful direct mail campaigns in history including the launch ofDoctor’s Book of Home Remedies. He worked side-by-side with copy writing legends Eugene Schwartz and Gary Bencivenga.

In other words, Michael spent 20 years living and breathing legendary copywriting. Lucky for me he passed along some simple yet powerful copy tips. (If you get this right, failure becomes extremely difficult).

Michael’s advice for writing an effective headline is to include these 4 C’s:

1. Credibility: Try to work credibility into your headline. Here are some examples:

“4 out of 5 Dentists Recommend...”
“A Solution that is Clinically Proven to ....”

2. Community: Customers respond when they are part of a community or group of people who have similar problems, etc.

For example, one of the members of the group sells hearing aids. He uses a headline similar to this one:

“We’ve helped 5,000 people hear again…”

3. Current Events: This “C” is really important. Headlines that are news related are highly effective.

For instance, if you are selling a program for diabetics, you could use a headline that says something like:

“A Solution for the Diabetes Debacle in America…”

There is a diabetes problem in America which has been reported quite often in health related news articles and other media.

4. Caring: This is where you show your desire to help your future customer. To build on the above hearing aid example, you could say:

“We’ve already helped 5,000 people hear again and we’d love to help you too.”

In sum, your headline is your most important element of your sales copy. I encourage you to go back and review your existing headlines and check for the “Four Cs” of an effective headline.

Perry titled the call: The Death of Affiliate Marketing on Google and you can find the corresponding blog post here.

Amit stated that in some industries the number of advertisers has been slashed from 50 to 5 as the result of the Adwords bans.

There were other comments made that gave me the impression that Google is or will be banning any and all affiliate marketers from using its advertising service.

Frankly, I think it’s a bit premature to think that Google’s goal is to rid the World of Affiliate Marketers. My observations indicate that Affiliate Marketing still continues to thrive on Google.

I do know several advertisers who are now banned for life. However, all of the objective evidence indicates that Google is targeting a very narrow category of advertisers – not just people who are doing Affiliate Marketing.

Specifically, all the banned advertisers who I know personally had one thing in common:

They promoted (or were suspected of promoting) a business opportunity (biz-opp) product. Even more specifically, they promoted a biz-opp product which used Google’s brand in the product name, e.g. Google Money Tree, Google Profits, Google PayDay, etc.

Google Money Tree could be especially problematic and perhaps the catalyst of the recent activity. A close friend of mine was banned by Google because he used “Google Money Tree” as a keyword.

His training material had nothing to do with Google Money Tree. However, he could not convince Google of his innocence. In other words, a single offensive keyword led to his demise!

Most affiliates were banned for promoting biz-opp deals which used the Google brand name

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the owners of Google Money Tree were sued just a few months before Google went on its Adwords ban rampage?

My legal background reminds me of the mindset of plaintiff’s lawyers. When I worked as an attorney in a civil litigation law firm I quickly learned that plaintiff’s lawyers always look for the deepest pockets.

In other words, if there is any way to name the deep pocket as a defendant, a plaintiff’s lawyer will figure it out. If I am the plaintiff’s lawyer for the consumers who were wronged by the Google Money Tree product, and I know that they used Adwords as a vehicle to promote the product, then I’m going to do all I can to get the $153 Billion Dollar Gorilla on the other side of the table.

As a lawyer advising your client, the primarily mindset is cover-your-ass. I would be shocked if Google’s attorneys didn’t warn the Adwords department of a potential messy lawsuit if they continued to allow advertisers to promote Google type biz opp products.

I’m aware of other non-affiliate advertisers who were banned too. I can only guess that they were unfortunately caught in a wide over-zealous net to catch the real targets.

(This all goes without mentioning how Google probably does not want their brand equity to be used to promote a hyped up biz-opp program).

Otherwise, my own experience as well as conversations with affiliates and account managers tells me that Google still is happy to accept money from Affiliate Marketers in most industries outside of the business opportunity space.

You can see this for yourself. Do a search for just about any product outside of the business opportunity/work from home market and add the word “reviews”. You will see that Google is often selling most of this space to affiliate marketers.

For instance, take a look at “web hosting reviews.” Five of the top six spots are affiliates.

Google still sells space to affiliates in other markets

This isn’t to say that you need a product review website to use Adwords. It is just one of the many obvious examples where Affiliates continue to thrive with Adwords.

In fact, Google is actively building its own Affiliate Network – recruiting super-affiliates and new advertisers. (And no, all of this is not part of a big conspiracy to monopolize the Affiliate World.)

The bottom line is that it’s a little premature to announce of “Death” of Affiliate Marketing on Google because a narrow slice of affiliates are no longer allowed to use Adwords to promote business opportunity products.

I believe that people are quick to over generalize Affiliate Marketing and throw Affiliates into the same bucket with shoddy products and price gouging continuity programs.

In fact, I was at a marketing conference a few weeks back when a very well known Internet Marketer walked up to me and said that he would never do Affiliate Marketing because his conscience would not allow him to fool consumers into singing up for a crappy weight loss continuity program.

I wasn’t sure whether to be more shocked or angry at his ignorance.

Being an Affiliate isn’t about fooling consumers into signing up for the latest “flavor of the month” continuity product.

Put simply, Affiliate Marketing is selling without the face-to-face aspect of sales.

Remember too that Affiliates were originally called Publishers because they had already published tons of content on a topic before they became affiliates. In other words, there are many affiliates who own websites containing a mountain of content on a particular topic. These affiliates also use Adwords.

What reason would Google have in banning such websites from using Adwords?

On that same topic, there are literally thousands of legitimate well-established bricks and mortar businesses with robust affiliate programs. Dozens of affiliates make damn good livings selling reputable products and services.

Here are just a few examples of products I’ve promoted as an Affiliate:

• Zappos Shoes
• Turbo Tax
• Web hosting
• Norton Anti-virus
• 123 Inkjets
• Travelocity
• Automobile parts
• Lawn and Garden products
• Weight Watchers
• Pet prescriptions and pet products
• Sporting goods and equipment
• Rosetta stone language learning

The list goes on and on and there are thousands more offers just like them.

Indeed, the Affiliate industry is very much alive and well on Google.

With that said, I did agree with Perry and Amit on how affiliates need to provide content in order to survive. I didn’t recall that any concrete examples on how to add value as an affiliate. So I decided to list the two most effective approaches that work for my affiliate sites:

1. Product Review/Testimonial – what I mean here is a real testimonial. My best advice to new affiliates is to USE a product or service before you promote it.In fact, most of the products I promote I have bought for myself, my relatives, and my closest friends. I use their feedback in my sales message.As a consumer you get the inside perspective of how a product works, the sales process, etc. In other words, you get the exact EXPERIENCE that your website visitors are looking for. Plus, you will notice the downsides of the product or service which are actually a great addition to your sales copy.

   For instance, if I were to promote the Kindle as an affiliate I would write about how the battery life stinks if you accidentally leave the wifi enabled.

   These sorts of things give your sales letter authenticity and creates a stronger sales message to a potential buyer.

2. Use the “Super-Sub-Niche Angle” – You’ll discover that many products and services solve a host of totally different problems. You can really differentiate yourself by segmenting your sales message and tailoring your sales page entirely towards just one of the problems.Let’s take the Weight Watchers example. Everybody knows that Weight Watchers is for people looking to lose weight. How about if you design your affiliate website around one of the many REASONS a person is trying to lose weight like:

   - They want to look good for an upcoming high school reunion
   - They want to get in shape for an upcoming beach vacation
   - They are recently divorced/separated and need to make themselves “marketable” for the dating scene

   I guarantee that if you dedicate your website to one of these super-sub-niche categories, your visitors will be 100% more satisfied than if they went directly to the Weight Watchers website.

   These are just a couple of ways to be an Affiliate who adds value.

   In other words, this is a way to find your USP as an Affiliate Marketer.

In closing, I totally disagree with anybody who claims that Affiliate Marketing is now “dead” on Google or any other online advertising platform. My experience has proven just the opposite.

However, I do appreciate anyone who warns me against getting comfortable with relying upon any single advertising medium as a reliable traffic source. I believe you should constantly test out alternative traffic methods as well as alternative affiliate offers. (I’ve had $50K per year affiliate offers die overnight!)

The days of easy profits from affiliate offers are long gone. The only security in this business is to hone your craft and get really, really good at copywriting, buying traffic, negotiation/joint venturing, and any other direct marketing skill.

Hope you had a good Christmas.

Mike and I were running adwords search traffic to our web site. Google came through and slapped the campaign. I have modified the ad, changed the landing page, but it still won’t run. Am I better off scrapping the domain and starting over or is there something else I can do?

Thanks,
Brianne

Hi Brianne -

I had this happen to my campaigns too. However, the main keywords that got dinged were the brand related keywords. The more generic keywords are still ok and the content traffic is still steady. Did you experience this as well or did you get the full blown slap where it appears as though a human went through and disabled your entire account?

In any event, here is my advice:

- Scrap the domain. I’ve battled with this a lot. On several occasions I spent hours and hours and money revamping a slapped domain. I added articles, content, blogs, etc. but could never revive a slapped domain.

It seems as though Google has handed down a life-sentence for that domain.

- Set up your landing page on a new domain. I’ve had better luck the second time around if I select a very keyword rich domain. Specifically, if you look at your heavy volume keywords and then select a domain with those keywords in it. That usually goes a long way with your quality score.

You may also consider this:

(a) add content to your landing page – on your new domain. Specifically, I suggest adding tons of content below your main above the fold landing page area. This usually won’t hurt conversions – and may actually improve them – and is adhering to quality guidelines. So, for instance, perhaps write a half – dozen paragraphs and place that content below the fold.

(b) consider installing a wordpress blog on the domain too. This shouldn’t take too long. I can’t find where this helps in the quality score guidelines, but I’ve seen it improve things. Considering google’s love affair with Wordpress, it may be worth the 30 minutes it takes to install it and post once in a while.

(c) upload your new campaign with adwords editor. I’ve seen my *initial* quality scores be higher by 2-3 points when I use the editor as opposed to the keyword tool or a manual upload. What happens after that is unpredictable, but at least you’ll start off with a slight advantage.

I hope this helps. Don’t be afraid of the slap. Most Adwords marketers consider it a badge of honor these days

-Ben

Jerry, one of our members, has been busy working on his site since he got back home from our Chicago “Tell Your Boss to Shove it Seminar“.

He is getting plenty of traffic but no sales. I reviewed his site and
adwords campaign and gave him my suggestions. I copied the email
string below:

Hey Ben,

I know you said I could call you anytime during business hours but I
wanted to give you a heads up so I can make the most of your time.
I’ve been working several hours every day on my campaigns in addition
to my new corporate job, to keep educating myself and increasing my
knowledge of this industry.

After returning home from Chicago, I started a google adwords
campaign, implemented negative keywords, am running separate parallel
campaigns for content network and search and have been split testing
ads. I have a $20 daily advertising budget ($10 search / $10 content).
I have approximately 140,000 impressions, but only 300 clicks.

Once on my site, I had 1200 impressions and only 34 click throughs to
merchant sites and no sales to date.

I need some guidance here. I have a Siberian Husky website and my
keywords are focused on that subject. My affiliate programs range from
pet medication to pet friendly hotels and everything in between.

Can you take a look at my website www. and give
me your input? I’d be happy to provide log in info for CJ, Google
adwords acct, etc. I have some theories but need some confirmation. I
need to make this website work or set this one aside and try another
project. Is my niche too narrow? Does it not generate enough traffic?

I really need your help. If you need me on the phone, if you want to
take a look first yourself, whatever it takes. I’m committed to making
this work. Please take a look and give me your input and let me know
what you need me to do.

Hi Jerry,

I spent some time reviewing your website, Google adwords account, and
ran a few reports – which you can find in the “Reporting” section of
your website. A couple observations/comments/suggestions for you:

1. First, the good news is that you know how to operate Google Adwords
pretty well. Your campaigns are set up just the way I would set up a
campaign. It’s not that easy to operate a decent adwords account so
congrats on that step.

Accordingly, you are getting some good relatively inexpensive traffic.
Your keyword search and content campaigns are both getting traction on
clicks that will not break the bank.

Your ad copy is pretty good with a decent click through rate. It could
be better but it’s a good start and it is nice to see that you are
split-testing ads. In sum, Traffic looks steady so now we have to look
at the conversion side of things.

2. Second, with respect to affiliate website conversion, I looked at the message to
offer match. In other words, what do the keywords tell us the person
is looking for AND, are you giving them what they want with your
landing page.

This is critical.

I ran a keyword report to see exactly what people searched for when
they landed on your website. Since you are bidding on the broad match
version of your words, you are getting all types of searches relating
to “siberian husky”.

The report is there for you to review, but my point is that with the
broad match enabled on the keyword “siberian husky”, you could get the
following searches on your ad:

- “buy a siberian husky”

- “siberian husky breeder rochester ny”

- “sell siberian huskies”

- “siberian husky diet”

Do you see how each of these people would want/need something TOTALLY
different?

With that being said, it seems like the main message of your landing
page is about giving advice on getting a siberian husky for new
siberian husky dog owners, correct?

Assuming that’s the case, that is totally ok. There are probably lots
of people looking for the great information you are offering. However,
that doesn’t make for a good match to the affiliate offer on your
landing page. The offer is probably better suited for CURRENT owners
who are looking for a discount on ped meds.

If I owned your website, I would do the following:

(a) figure out exactly WHY people are coming to your site. Obviously
this is a hungry market because you can easily get hundreds of
visitors per day, which is very exciting. You just need to find out
WHY/WHAT information they are looking for, etc.

(b) let’s assume they are looking for info on getting a siberian
husky. You may consider doing your own ebook and offering that for
sale INSTEAD of affiliate links – unless you can find an existing
ebook for sale that you can promote as an affiliate.

You could produce a great ebook probably within an afternoon. You’d
have your own product and could make money on the ebook, develop/
cultivate a list of avid siberian husky owners which you could later
market to – via autoresponders, etc.

Those are my initial thoughts in a nutshell.

A few other random notes – I created a content report for you in your
adwords account. You can see which urls displayed your ads. Google is
showing your own ads on your own website – oops!

In other words, you
are paying for clicks on your site for people to go for your site – or
paying google double for the same person. I would exclude your site
from your content placements. Also, review the list of sites and see
what else is irrelevant that snuck into your ad serving.

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!)