How and Why PPC Search Affiliates are Changing Direction
I cheered inwardly during our “Super Affiliate PPC Marketing Strategies” session at Affiliate Summit, when Amit Mehta stated that he would eventually focus primarily on creating content or ‘authority sites’, adding that is what all search affiliates should consider doing.
The other day I cheered aloud after reading Jeremy Palmer’s latest newsletter in which he states, “Over the past few years my focus has shifted from building dozens of mini-sites to developing a handful of authority sites.“
So, why was I cheering?
I cheered because although Amit and Jeremy (both students of the Super Affiliate Handbook) are best known for earning millions as search affiliates, they’ve both publicly recognized the value in the affiliate marketing model I’ve used and taught for years – the content model.
Jeremy explains the difference perfectly when he says “I still have several mini-sites in my portfolio. I think they’re good for testing new niches and generating short term profits.“
Fundamental point there – short-term.
As a search affiliate you build landing page after landing page and continually have to throw PPC traffic at them because they never attain significant search engine rankings. Because of competition, each landing page (product promotion) is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Not only does the work never end, but creating landing page campaigns for products you really don’t care about is pretty boring work.
On the other hand, as an affiliate publisher you invest most of your time and energy upfront building out content on a topic you know and love. Pay per click advertising (PPC) can be used to market the site initially, but you can lower your PPC spend over time as the site grows in search engine favor (traffic) and likewise, earnings. By offering a number of related products on a single site, the site doesn’t die because one product is no longer offered or the market is saturated with competitors. Best of all, once your content site has attracted a significant following and your mailing list is a good size, you might only have to post to your blog once or twice a week – or, in other words, your workload decreases.
Fundamental points there – similar earnings with less work and sustainable over time. 
To learn more about the benefits of being a content publisher or the authority site model of affiliate marketing, read Choose Your Affiliate Business Model Wisely.
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Posted / Revised on February 12, 2009 under Affiliate Marketing, Make Money, Pay Per Click Advertising  |
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Rosalind Gardner is a Super Affiliate blogger, author, speaker, and Internet marketing consultant. For more info, subscribe to her No-Hype, No-BS, No Spam NPT newsletter and join Affiliate Blogger PRO to get answers to all your affiliate marketing questions. Thanks for visiting!
Both have their place in the internet marketing/aff mktg space.
The google cash model is arbitrage, short term and can generate easy cashflow, especially if you’re new to the game.
Content sites are good for the medium to long term once they’ve achieved critical mass. You need critical mass of content on the site and a critical mass of eyes to view the content, read the pre-sells/recommendations, and take action.
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Although I’m a proponent of the long term game myself, I find the short term game to be useful to build traffic fundamentals and it’s an easy source to fund the long term content model.
Hey Andrew,
Thanks for popping by.
Don’t know that I agree that arbitrage equals ‘easy cashflow especially if you’re new to the game’.
It’s easy from the perspective that one doesn’t need a website, but choosing the right product and creating that perfect ad that converts to mega sales is another matter entirely.
Based on years of talking to new affiliates who have tried that route out of the gate, I’d say that the vast majority spend more money trying to make that model work than they can afford to lose… and ultimately have nothing to show for it, no subscribers, no site.
I’d suggest that strategy may have potential for those new affiliates who either have deep pockets and can afford to spend a fair amount of coin while learning the ropes or those with solid advertising & market research skills.
My 2 cents.
Cheers,
Ros
Hi Ros,
Definitely with you on the long term focus on the content sites.
What I’ve discovered having coached new affiliates is that with ‘holistic affiliate marketing’ (the type we ultimately strive towards) there’s the need to master skills like traffic generation (whether PPC/SEO/both), offer selection, pre-selling, landing page creation, copywriting, opt-in/followup, etc).
As a first campaign, I’d suggest a direct link, so the student only has to master 30-50% of their eventual skillset, and once they have got themselves bloodied, then I go into the landing page/full content site phase.
The ultimate stage is to master the necessary skills to become an affiliate with a long term business. Our path to that goal might differ.
And yes, I agree that google cash is definitely not an easy thing to master, so the hard work approach definitely applies even for basic marketing techniques.
I must say, that my first experience of making money online was through the Google-Cash model. The issue I found was that people kept bidding out my listings so without constant monitoring, the cashflow dried up.
However it was enough to whet my appetite for affiliate marketing, so ever since then I’ve been looking for time to get back in the game, for the long term this time!
Having read your book and attended both of Jeremy’s Black Inn programs i tend to fall in the middle. While there is no doubt that using SEO technics on affiliate sites is a greate way to increase traffic, authority and lower your ppc costs, im not sure i want to put all my eggs in a single basket. It takes alot of effort to build an authority site and if that subject area goes out of favor you are left with a site that has no interest. Also if the search engine god decides to make major changes its harder to react to them.
So having said that i tend to lean in the middle with sites and subjects that are easy to addapt and build. I don’t do 5 page sites but i don’t build 100 page sites either. Most of my sites run about 25 pages with every thing the search engine wants to see and good content. I also run about 20 sites across a broad range of subjects. I don’t think i could deal with putting a year of effort into a couple of large authority sites to have the SE change its mind and leave me unable to react.
My success has be flexablity and the ability to reach to the changing market.
Hi Charlie,
Thanks kindly for sharing your thoughts on this subject and I agree that taking a middle of the road approach is better than going the arbitrage route.
As to the potential for authority sites losing favor – I advocate working in big markets. There’s not much chance that people will stop wanting to find love or suddenly be cured of their ills anytime soon.
Re the search engine gods making major changes that have an ill effect on an authority site – I’ve never lost one moment of sleep over that possibility or felt even a whisper of a breeze when the ill-winds have wiped others out.
Why? ‘Cause I play the game completely straight up to stay friends with Google.
Lastly, I wouldn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket either – although I did work in only one market from 1998 until 2003 and that market has actually become one of today’s hottest markets. But for those wanting to hedge their bets, I like to encourage folks to build a site out to become fully profitable before they move on to the next.
Cheers,
Ros
Cheering right along with you. This is a very good point to building a sustainable model. Looking forward to your next post Ros!
There’s no one answer for everyone as to how to spend your time and efforts.
I have several organic sites that get a ton of traffic and have less than 10 pages of content. Tons of content is not necessarily a prerequisite for ranking well organically. With exact-match domain names and controversial content you can quickly build a load of links and rank incredibly fast for even highly competitive terms.
PPC can help pay the bills while you build out highly linkable sites in tandem. Adwords quality score is much more about CTR now than it has been for years, so with mini sites that aren’t total garbage you can usually do just fine on Adwords (provided your CTR is solid.)
I would be hesitant to turn away a quick hundred grand in PPC profit in order to completely focus on ‘one day’ hoping to rank hundreds of pages of organic content in Google.
As many webmasters will attest to, organic traffic just doesn’t convert as well as PPC traffic. I’ve found you need about 4 times the organic visitors to get the same conversion you would get on PPC. This is simply a byproduct of the fact that PPC clicks are so much more targeted by nature.
In short, I would do both in tandem and start with building smaller organic sites if you want to try your hand outside of PPC. But by all means grab any PPC profits you can.
Yes, I heard Amit say this too. I am a current student of his at PPC Classroom 2.0. Great value added by him. I recently joined the Google Shadow PPC program too. Way more pricey, but he advocates the numbers game aspect and direct linking.
I guess it’s an issue of how lazy the PPC affiliate is. They can shoot out mass direct linking campaigns, or take the time to create those authority sites.
I’m gonna stick to the lazy way for now….
Cheers,
Paul
I definitely like the idea of not having to post alot to the site after getting it where you want it to be! I’m finding out that I can get just as many rankings in the search engine by not concentrating to much on posting and more on first page results! just my opinion though!
what made Amit Mehta change his mind
Following up on the point Geordie made previously, I PERSONALLY know organic affiliates who seemingly have very targeted content sites, and their conversion rates are horrible.
Sure, they’re not paying for clicks but you can’t count out their time in building the sites, building out links, etc.
With that in mind organic traffic can be more expensive than PPC.
I’m not saying I disagree with the idea of building content sites (I’ve had a lot of success with that actually) however, I think a blend of both is key. Use PPC to find out what is converting, then attack those keywords organically by way of articles etc.
And don’t pause your keywords you are ranking for once you get organic traffic to them… keep PPC going as well to dominate
Just my 2 cents.
Peter
Hi Ros, can superaffiliates these days really make big money without investing heavily in PPC? I hope so, but it seems like everythng you read is about PPC. I’ve tried it a few times with no success.
Hi Kris,
You don’t have to invest heavily, you have to invest smart.
I’d recommend checking out the report that the PPC Classroom
guys just came out with which talks about the mistakes folks
make with PPC.
Hope that helps!
Cheers,
Ros
Hi Ros, I am so glad to read this post as I was going to start working on new project based on minisite model.
Even though I know these kind of sites will not show up on search engines, I was prepared to do PPC and article marketing because I wanted a model that was less work because building a content site requires lots of time, effort and endurance. But at the back of my mind, I did question how sustainable is this and your post just confirm it.
In fact, I have some success with a full content niche site and all my traffic was from search engines but this came only 3 years after I started the site, which I was convinced to work on after buying your ebook. The initial effort was huge and often there was very little money. Gradually (albeit slowly), the ranking climbed up, my traffic keep increasing and so does the money. Now I earn a nice little side income from this site.
This is my 1st site, its kind of messy because its part of my learning process and I don’t even update the content nowadays. But the point is, I do see the value of a good content site, its like real estate. A few mths back, I started 2 other content sites built on wordpress (based on your recommendation!) and I was amazed to see how fast my post got indexed in search engines and the traffic keeps increasing without any use of PPC.
So now I’ve decided to focus on my existing content sites and keep working and tweaking on it until I see another value appreciation again.
Hi Rosalind, I agree with you entirely. Spending $1000′s per month and constantly tweaking, only to watch click costs rise and competition go up as your competitors delve into your ppc campaigns via all the spy tools is not my idea of fun.
Added to which with PPC we are constantly lining Google’s pockets and fighting for every scrap of ROI.
Last October our main affiliate program effectively took away our ability to run PPC campaigns.
So guess what, we had to really concentrate on real content building and SEO and we haven’t looked back since, we are now turning over more in gross sales and affiliate commissions, we have highly targeted loyal traffic that buys and we will earn in excess of 6 figuresfrom this one site alone this year.
In addition of course the site is WORTH far more as an asset
Needless to say we are now in the process of repeating this model with two more sites.
OH and did I mention that its far more relaxing and enjoyable?
Cheers, keep up the good work Rosalind
Ian Orford, Editor, ThinkPadToday.com