This is a super-quick Case Study for an Affiliate Promotion.
I am going to tell you why I did it, how I did it, how I chose the product and the merchant, how long it took me to set it up, and every other detail about this simple process.
By Affiliate Promotion I simply mean that I will sign up for an affiliate program, promote a product, and earn commission (cha-ching! that means money!) on the product sales.
Let me preface this Case Study by saying that I am a lazy Affiliate Marketer. Or at least, in this case you'll see an extreme example of that ~grin~. Lazy means easy, and easy is good, right? Read on as I share the details of this quick affiliate strategy...
Why the Lazy/Easy Way?
Because I'm busy. Because I dont have a lot of free time to spare on new projects. Because I'd rather be working on my primary websites.
But mainly because... it works.
Time and again I have invested 30 minutes to 3 hours on a simple promotion, and earned commission on that promotion for several years. I call them "streams of passive income", each one generating $50-$600/month consistently and requiring little to no maintenance.
Obviously you can invest a lot of time, and expect a great return, in affiliate campaigns. And to be clear, I do have large affiliate sites that require more development and maintenance time. But the purpose of this Case Study is to share my lazy affiliate strategy.
note: sometimes these lazy little campaigns will turn into larger projects. They are great market testers!
Selecting a Product or Niche
Regular readers may remember my little "cat in the hat" promotion a few years ago, where I made money online when the movie came out during that Christmas season. The idea for that Affiliate Promotion came to me while I was shopping, and saw a kiosk in the store promoting Cat In The Hat merchandise.
The way that I choose products to promote hasnt changed much over the years. I might see a commercial, hear about something from a friend, purchase the product myself - just about everything I run across has the potential to be my next "victim" (lol).
My most recent product of choice is the Digital Picture Frame. I saw this product while browsing through a camera store with a friend over the weekend, and fell in love with it. I decided to research it online when I got back to my desk, and made a quick note to myself and stuck that in my purse.
You'd have to know me... I'm "out of sight, out of mind" 🙄 . At any rate - product selection is that simple. I might come up with the niche first, or the product, but basically it begins with an idea that was sparked by something I saw or ran across online even.
I simply thought, "This looks like a cool product. I'm going to check that out online."
Finding an Affiliate Program for the Product
The first thing I do is look at affiliate programs for the product. I want to make sure there are decent programs before I put any time or effort into researching the niche. Here's what I look for in an affiliate program:
- good product selection - I want my buyers to have options
- good commission structure and decent payout
- internal linking, so I can link directly to specific products
- nice landing pages, easy to use, that will convert well
Anything else is a bonus. These are the things that matter most to me when I am choosing between affiliate programs to promote a specific product or product type.
I walk through the buying process through each affiliate program - or the affiliate link, to be specific - and determine what would suit my potential visitors most. Which means, what would convert best, and have the highest profit potential.
Where do I start looking for Affiliate Programs? Usually the larger networks that I am involved with. For this product, I began at CJ.com (Commission Junction) because I know that they carry other electronics. I could always use my Amazon.com account, but higher payouts can usually be found with other merchants.
Why CJ? Simple. For small "lazy" campaigns, I dont want to worry about multiple small checks and payout minimums. If I have 10-20 merchants in one network, I can manage everything from that one account. I also receive one commission check, which is a lump sum of earnings from all of those campaigns. It just makes sense.
I logged into CJ.com, clicked the "get links" button at the top of the page, and did a search for "digital picture frames". Several merchants came up in that search, and I walked through each one as I described above. The commission ranged from 2%-10%, and some merchants carried one model while others carried several.
I was able to find a merchant that offered a good product selection, internal linking options, an easy ordering process... and 10% commission. Ten percent is great on physical products - particularly electronics.
I was sold on working with that merchant. At this point I am all of 7 minutes into the process, tops. Its time to research the market and see whether it is worth my time to try a "quick & easy lazy promo"...
Researching the Niche or Product
I am a quick 7 minutes into this process. I'm not going to waste more than 10 before I know whether to keep going, or ditch the idea and get back to work. My next stop is Overture's free tool for a quick assessment on the number of searches for this product.
Overture will give you a quick glance at the number of searches done in a month for any given keyword phrase, and an idea of how deep that market runs - or how many similar/related phrases are used.
I tried a couple of variations: digital photo frames and digital picture frames. One had over 12,000 searches, the other more than 17,000. That's at least 400/day, so I decide its worth it to continue the research.
That "quick glance" might have taken 90 seconds, by the way. Nothing fancy here.
Knowing that Overture will lump plural and singular versions of words together, my next stop is the WordTracker (free trial version). I check both phrases at WordTracker, and make note that there are 800+ searches/day for each phrase, in the singular version. (note: Overture & WordTracker results will always vary from each other - they pull their data from different sources)
I'm not creating an entire "Affiliate Site" here, or doing a major promotional campaign, so I'm keeping the research simple. My next step is to see how competitive these two phrases are in the search results, and then pick one to optimize my web page.
I havent created that page yet, mind you - I want to make sure I feel confident I can compete in the top ten search results before I invest any time in setting up a web page or any other promotional element.
I went to Google. Typed in each of the keyword phrases. I looked over the top 10 results. I noted any "authority sites" that would be hard to compete with - such as wikipedia, amazon.com, etc.
I then looked at individual web pages, noted basic "on the page optimization factors". Did they use that phrase in their page title? Did they use that phrase within the content? And next I looked at the number of inbound links to each of those pages (using Yahoo! Site Explorer or "the link command).
After this quick look, I had a general idea what it would take to rank in the top 10 for these two keyword phrases... and picked the one that looked easiest 😀 .
If you want my in-depth methods, see Market Research and Keyword Analysis. Warning though, they are GOOD but will take you much longer than the time I spent putting this entire promotion together (laugh).
Promoting the Affiliate Program
Having picked a Primary Keyword Phrase, I was ready to put together a web page and optimize it. A PMK is simply the keyword phrase you most want your page to rank well for in the major search engines.
I just made a simple template and then uploaded that page to a domain I already have (this one, actually). I logged into my affiliate network, CJ.com, and got the linking code along with pictures and descriptions, for each of the products in that line.
I did edit the formatting of those descriptions, took some pieces out and re-worded others. I also added a descriptive paragraph at the top of the page. I spent about half an hour putting this page together.
I used the Primary Keyword Phrase in the Title Bar, within the content, and in both outgoing and incoming links. I then blogged about this product - specifically how it could be used as a marketing or promotional tool, since that is the topic of my blog - and linked to the page. I used related technorati tags in that post as well.
Next I wrote a short article (around 700 words) and submitted it to 6 popular article directories.
All of that was done yesterday (Monday) after seeing the product while shop browsing on Sunday afternoon. This morning (8am on Tuesday) I see that Google has already indexed the blog post that I published on Monday, though they havent yet indexed the new page that is specifically about the products. Yahoo and MSN havent indexed any of the new pages yet (related to this promotion), though they have noticed the links to those pages... so its just a matter of time.
I'll keep you posted on results 😉
Best,
Technorati Tags: case study, case studies, affiliate strategy, affiliate programs, lazy marketing
About Lynn Terry
Update #1 My article was republished on a wordpress blog this morning, less than 48 hours after I began the promotion.
You "blipped" over a thing or two, Lynny...
For instance, what's Yahoo's Site Explorer and "the link command"? How are they used?
You made a simple template (knowing you, probably during a nap), but what's a good source for templates for even quicker use for the techno-impaired or just plain impatient?
All in all as always, great stuff!!
Great questions!
The "link command" is when you type in "link:" (link colon) and then any URL. You type this into the Yahoo search box and it will take you to Yahoo! Site Explorer and show you the inbound link data for that URL.
As for templates, I just open a WYSIWYG editor, like Dreamweaver or NVU and create a table and then paste in product images and description code from the merchant.
You can get free templates, or buy templates, by doing a search on Google for "website templates" or "free website templates".
The point of this article was to outline a simple strategy, and then update it with results over time. But ANY questions you - or anyone - have, feel free to ask! 😉
~ Lynn
Lynn could you mention what you looked at and how many backlinks etc. you'll need to crack the top ten. And a possible time frame?
I love the idea of how you are doing this though but some other details would be nice so us newer people can figure out what type of top 10 numbers to avoid and which ones look reasonable.
My in-depth methods are actually linked to above (links marked Keyword Analysis and Market Research). Those pages should prove very helpful!
If you have any other questions, let me know!
Ohh 🙁 lol I somehow over looked the links in that paragraph and yes it does help quite a bit, thanks lynn.
No problem! If that still leaves you with ANY questions, let me know. It helps me a lot to see where I missed clarifying certain points. Not to mention... I enjoy the questions 😉
Lynn, This is very easy to set up and it looks like it won't take long to get a number of decent back links and take a top 10. I set one up myself yesterday in about 3 hours and It was really simple. I used a different market than photo frames and I'd say total time I spent doing it was about 5 hours total while 3 of that was to set up the site and do the research etc. The great thing about this is much like you said I can work on my bigger project/projects while this is sort of a side project to build on.
I will let you know my progress with this if you'd like my feed back on it.
Absolutely! Keep us posted 😉
I will certainly be checking back to see how you are doing, but I have decided to try your methods for myself! lol. You are going to have a whole bunch of copycats after this project!
Good luck!
Are you using the same product line, or going with something different?
Update #2
Google has indexed the new page that I created. Yahoo and MSN have not yet.
Well things look good this morning 2 of my back links were discovered by google and yahoo, but the actual page not indexed yet just the reference pages, this only 4 days after I set it up.
I will note that I did not blog about my page which could be why it took an extra couple days to pick up on the reference.
Good progress for 4 days 😉
Thanks for the update!
I´ll be using something else, I´m still working through your niche techniques to find a good niche and product! No need for all of us to bunch up in one area, it ruins it for everyone!
Great! If you need any help with the process or tools, there is a Market Research section at my discussion forum.
Best,
Lynn Terry
Ok its day 6 and Google has picked up my actual web page for the product but like yours Lynn yahoo and MSN have not yet. I'll let you know when I get into the top 10 and make a sale whenever that happens.. lol
I actually made my first sale already yesterday! It was due to a blog post tag that was tagged and picked up by technorati. So the sale wasn't big but it was $1.72 without a whole lot of work and not many visitors. I am confident that once my page cracks the top 10 it will do very well. I am only about 2 weeks into this project.
Excellent - Congratulations!
That's great progress 😉 Thanks for the update
Lynn, I've got to say only doing this for a short time has been interesting. I am making about $5 a day just from adsense clicks on a one page site + blog. Also other interesting things have been a small low priced google adwords campaign has allowed me about $30 in sales. So far I've spent $22 and made $65 and thats without being listed in the top 10 yet. I have to say its been fun and interesting and am starting to see how doing this could potentially pay off very well or- turn into a larger product. However the one product I am trying this with will die out eventually as its just a phase but.... other products could do well for years to come. You are a good teacher and I appreciate the chance to learn from you. Thanks again Lynn.
Michael b.
I'm glad you decided to give it a trial run on your end, because honestly - that is the best way to learn a technique.
I have a few pages out there that have been passively generating small streams of income for years now, that are set up like this one - simple & easy.
One such page did so well that I ended up creating an entire affiliate site around its niche 😉
~ Lynn
Update #3
Michael is doing much better so far with his page than I am with my own 🙂 . So far no sales, and no adsense clicks to report.
My page does not rank in the top 100 on Google for the 3-word phrase. It still hasnt been indexed in Yahoo or MSN yet.
I'm not giving up so easily though, and I am still dropping links to it here and there 😉
Lynn, I will say I have probably been spending more time with back links to my site than most would probably on a small project like this. Also the item that I am competing for has a relatively low competition and has more than 700,000 searches a month but again a year from now that niche will be bone dry. So I guess a bit of luck on my part as well. I believe I read somewhere on one of your sites about utilizing yahoo answers and I've been doing that as well 🙂 Putting in a plug where ever possible. Adwords has helped generate a few sales I would not be doing yet otherwise so I am sort of cheating on the actual technique of not spending any money to get the project going as well as I've invested a little bit of money.
That's a good thing though - it gives you an opportunity to test out a variety of methods. This being a "lazy method" for me (one I have done several times over the last couple of years), I usually let them age a little after the initial few backlinks, and then 'nudge' them now and then every month or so with a few more. Over time, they become steady streams of income.
Some small, some okay. I have two pages right now that combined are earning between $900 and $1200/month. Not overnight of course, but using the same strategy.
I am enjoying your updates - this is great stuff!
Lynn, just to give another update as of yesterday. Right now some of the items selling through me are from amazon with a low referral rate but as you sell more your referral rate increases. Granted to get to 8.5% it takes quite a few sales but to get to 6.5% takes 35 items sold, which isn't too bad. I work through another affiliate that gives a 10% referral fee no matter what but the prices on their merchandise are a little bit higher. At one point I had the higher percentage merchandise up top and was making a few steady sales, but nothing to crazy. I decided to put the better bargain on top 2 days ago and the more expensive items on the bottom.
Doing this created 14 sales yesterday alone. On an adwords spend of about $6. Which earned me about $20, + $5.50 just in adsense banner clicks. So yesterday I made $19.50 for just flipping the better deal to the top even though I make much less over time it will get closer.
My goal is to get a numerous amount of these kind of sites going after I see the ups and downs of this one and go from there. I am realizing now through success of this that if its done correctly the money is there. I also learned another valuable lesson that I already know because I had spent 10 years in the retail market already: That when you think about the best value for your customer you have more success, it doesn't always mean you make the most money from every sale but maybe more sales and possibly repeat customers which is worth more to me than one high priced sale.
Lynn I hope to have pages that eventually do $1000 month. I am also confident through continued learning through your sites and forums that it will happen. 🙂
VERY good tip, Michael!
Everyone likes a better deal - whether that is in value or in dollars - and offering that will appeal to potential buyers.
Of course, as you are finding out, the only real way to know any particulars about how a targeted market will respond... is to test, test, test 😉
🙂 Lynn, Just to let you know before I found your site and really payed attention to the things you described I was doing no good in this field. You are awesome and I just want you to know that.
The more I learn the better I get and trust me if I can do this stuff anyone reading this can as well.
Thank you, Michael 😀
That means A LOT!
Update on my campaign: Sales have continued very strong through my adwords campaign. I am scoring a 15.5% click through rate granted It took a few days to hone this was at a 4.5% for a few days. My sell rate is about 6-7% again after a few days of honing this. Another cool thing I am utilizing is a free trial ($25 free) through msn adcenter. I don't believe its as good as google and probably won't continue using it much when the free trial is up but its free money and anyone new should give that a try.
So I am approaching about $70 profit now after all my expenses this month so far.
Excellent! Thanks for another encouraging update 🙂
Just to drop another update. I am now up to $90 profit for the month and things still look good. The campaign has slowed down a bit and less #'s are converting over the last few days. But some things have worked.
Blogging helped alot, adwords helped convert sales I wouldn't have had yet and having adsense strategically placed within the blog and main website has added alot of sales I wouldn't have otherwise landed.
Something else over the last week that has taken off has surprised me. Its AuctionAds and it actually helped on some of the harder to find items that were selling at premium prices on ebay. It allows you to link to ebay auctions weith just a couple clicks. Now for me this isn't a huge thing, as I make alot better % profit from my affiliate partners than I do from auction ads but it has helped on some items that are bid up into the $90 range as I've been able to make about $4-$5/ transaction. So its been helpful in that sense but I wouldn't base my sales dependency around it. I have made around $15 from that this week as well.
Lynn or anyone else have you tried it and had strong success? Its worth a try and pretty easy to set up.
Just wanted to drop the sales and stat updates and provide everyone with a little of what is working for me a newbie to this field 🙂
I was reading about it just last week - or perhaps it was a different one. The one managed by ShoeMoney and recommended by Text-Link-Ads. May be a different animal altogether - I'll check it out through your link 😉
I think done by the same person but are 2 different programs. Auctions ads is pretty cool and you can use it right along with adsense because its not contextual based.
It also self updates through script. It brings up correct content based on the keywords you enter when you set up a new link or campaign or you can make your own custom links with a URL link converter they have on there.
They've worked a lot of the bugs out since I first signed up about a month ago and still sometimes you'll get a few off the wall items that get listed instead of what you actually want but usually its pretty on track. Someone with a lot of marketing experience might be able to do much better with it than I have but like I said its starting to do its job for me 🙂
As for text link I haven't tried that yet. I don't like the idea really myself. It just seems it takes people away from your site and I can't imagine a high conversion rate for something like that but hehehe 🙂 I don't know I'm still a rookie.
If you are an eBay affiliate, there are tools within their own in-house toolkit to show auctions based on keyword - or by a particular seller, etc. I'll have to look into those two services to see how they compare to using eBay's tools (which is what I have always done in the past)...
Lynn, a question for you. I had a #1 rank in a couple of keywords even as of yesterday and today I am nowhere to be found for those key words. Do they come back? Or is this a common thing with google?
Is your domain name fairly new, or aged and well established? Fluctuations are usually normal for new pages or new sites once they are ranked...
Its pretty new maybe 2 months old. So thats probably the problem? Just yesterday I had 3 keywords that had #1's and then today i checked and they are gone.. lol
Yes, with aged/established domains rankings usually stick. Newer domains tend to fluctuate in the results while Google is determining their reputation. Keep at it - you're on track and everything will fall into place and stabilize over the next 6-12 months!
Thanks Lynn! 🙂
BTW an update as of today. So far my site has brought in $270 in 22 days and my spend has been $110. So I'm really excited about my progress and really hope with in a couple of years I can do this full time, I absolutely love this stuff!
Its addictive, isnt it? 😀
Yes and very rewarding. I work in sales right now and not online and I'll tell you this is so much more rewarding than that. I have a time frame and a plan in place that I want to be doing this full time within a couple of years and I really believe I'll do it. Learning from people like you who have been successful is also very encouraging because its shows it can be done.
Its fun and it can be tough work but most importantly I enjoy internet marketing so I want to leave the corporate world and get this going. 🙂
A time frame + an action plan = goal achievement
Feel free to join us on the discussion forum as well - there are a lot of great resources there and you'll find help every step of the way!
~ Lynn
Amazing stuff, Lynn - you should write a post highlighting Mike's success. I just stumbled upon this post by chance, and can't wait to try it out!
Great suggestion!
Keep us posted on your progress as well if you get the time to check back. I'd love to hear another success story with this method!
Ok another weekly update of my progress. My total spend for the month so far on advertising with adwords is $130.75.
My total make is $433.17. Profit= $302.42. In 25 days.
Adwords has cost me some money buy also expedited up the process of making money while I am waiting for my ranking to increase.
For anyone who doesn't believe this stuff trust me 4 months ago I had no clue how to do any of this stuff and up until recently had no success with this market. This technique has worked and continues to work. Trying new things daily and learning and understanding more about this has helped. Experimenting has brought me even more success it just took longer to get it all right but I believe for me to learn I need to experiment as much as possible.
I think anyone who is in internet sales or marketing should give this technique a try and variate the process to fit your needs.
I'd say that $300 profit is pretty damned good for only my second site/page I have ever built.
Anyone could learn and benefit from Lynn on this subject.
Thanks
Michael
Thanks for another positive update, Michael - that is great news! I am sure that with continued tracking & tweaking your costs will go down and your profits will continue to go up.
Keep up the great work 😉
Just a quick update and I'll give another one at weeks end. I have made $735 this month from my pages which has now expanded to 2 pages to incorporate additional product.
My Profit is $458 as I have spent money on adwords to boost sales faster. 7 Days left in the month and my goal is $600 profit.
I'll give another update probably sunday and then 1 at the end of the month. I hope this helps anyone who is in limbo as to whther or not to try this technique.
-Michael
Congratulations!
Is most of your traffic currently coming from the Adwords campaign, or are you also getting search engine traffic or traffic from other links/sites?
I am getting about 35/day from just internet search traffic the rest is from adwords. I spread my spend out, I utilize using multiple ads for similar items rather than a one size fits all ad. So an ad for 1 product might have 2 ads running for it with different wordings and different ad groups.
I have about 13 ads running now, the main ad I advertise for about $25 a day the rest are $1.50-$2.50 each but are just more targeted for less popular words. As of 8 am I was scoring a 10.65% click through rate for over 1700 clicks for the entire campaign month.
The main problem I've been having with just search traffic is my site keeps dropping in and out of the ranks. So without using adwords I wouldn't be making anything close to this nearly this fast. Eventually I think using this technique and gathering the back links I'll be getting more free search engine traffic.
Absolutely - but PPC is always a great way to kick-start the traffic 😉