Pursuit of Profit

Time to stop focusing on my traffic stats and adsense flow. It’s time to buckle down and make some real money with an affiliate marketing campaign. These campaigns aren’t easy profit, but if your do your research and put in the time you have a better chance of running a profitable campaign.

I have run few affiliate campaigns in the past, some were profitable and others I ended up losing money on. The first hurdle in affiliate marketing is finding a product or service to promote. Take a look at ClickBank for a huge list of digital download products to promote. You can also find CPA (cost per action) campaigns through an affiliate promotion company like Neverblue (referral link) . There are so many offers out there it’s hard to know where to start and which ones can make you money. Some companies will try to entice would be marketers with huge commissions, but look deeper in to their product. Are others promoting it? If not why? Remember, huge commission is nothing if it doesn’t sell!

After you find a product or service you believe has some potential, start researching the market. I will usually go to Overture and see if there are many searches per month for the item. Then I mosey on over to Spyfu (a comprehensive keyword/ competitor research tool) and see what the competition is like. After taking a look at these two factors I ask myself a question that requires a truthful answer about the profitability of the item. Can I compete against these competitors, or is the Cost Per Click (CPC) too steep to make a profit?

If you deem it profitable, it doesn’t mean that it actually will be! Even after a ton of research and a good feeling, I’ve been dead wrong more than a few times. However, this could be due to failing in one of the following steps.

After you have your product you have to create an affiliate landing page. This can be as simple as embedding an I frame of your affiliate link or even just linking directly to your pre-made affiliate landing page. I have recently heard from a friend that just like organic SEO, there is sponsored SEO. So writing or buying unique content and having a few pages is a good idea. This is where I’m at with my affiliate project right now.

I have picked out a few products, purchased a domain name, and checked out the competition. The product I am focusing on comes highly recommended from a friend who showed me his daily revenue stats. So I know there is money to be made and room for a few more marketers in this genre.

I am also going to try something a little bit different from my previous PPC marketing campaigns. And it will be interesting to see how it works out. Direct details wont be released on the blog pages for the first month, this will give me time to get settled in my market without excess competition. However, more revealing details will be released via a monthly newsletter once it’s set up (if you know of a good email newsletter plugin for wordpress drop me a line)!