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.

This is SO sweet.

My Google Alerts led me to Shawn Collin’s (co-founder of Affiliate Summit) Affiliate Tip blog entry titled “Rosalind Gardner’s Biggest Fan” where I found this picture of his son Jack, perusing the Super Affiliate Handbook.

Shawn makes the comment “… it never fails. He passes by Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Jay Conrad Levinson, Frank Luntz, Robert Cialdini, John Caples and all the rest. Always straight to Ros.”

Well Shawn, I’m honored to know that you have my book on your shelf and delighted to see that you’re teaching your kids right and giving them a great leg up in the affiliate marketing world.

Too, Jack may be my biggest fan, but he’s also my cutest fan!

On August 1st, I received an email promoting the Super Affiliate Handbook (included at the bottom of this post), purportedly from the affiliate manager at MP3Dollars. I paid little attention to the email, thinking it was perhaps valid as I was once an affiliate of theirs and also have a friend who used to work for them.

I was later contacted by the real MP3Dollars affiliate manager who told me that the affiliate responsible for this email (CB affiliate ID mycpa2003) had in fact busted into their email server and sent the message out to all of their affiliates. Well, it turns out that he busted into the Kowabunga system as a whole and sent that email to affiliates of many of their merchants. I’ll say this about that.

I hate spam. I don’t do it, nor do I condone the actions of those who spam to make money online as affiliates. I find this case particularly abhorrent as this idiot’s actions affect me personally.

Clickbank has been informed of the problem and at very least the affiliate will be black-listed from promoting the Super Affiliate Handbook. I do however hope that Clickbank acts on my recommendation to terminate the spammer’s account.

Ultimately, it would be wonderful to see networks such as Clickbank, Commission Junction and Linkshare work together to share such information and terminate all of this affiliate spammer’s accounts.

In reviewing my records, Clickbank affiliate mycpa2003 sold 14 copies of the Super Affiliate Handbook between August 1st (the date the email was sent) and August 12th.

So as not to profit from the avails of spam, I made a donation of $658.00 (the total amount of sales and double my earnings from those sales) to one of the many charitable organization that I regularly sponsor. It would be my wish that mycpa2003 change his cheating and lying ways and do likewise.

This is the email that was sent out:

Hi,Rosalind Gardner
This time I HIGHLY RECOMMEND “Super Affiliate Handbook”
The Authors is one of our super affiliates.
Read the amazing true story of how one woman, with no previous business experience, earned $436,797 in 2006 from our affiliate program and now earns MUCH MORE than that … just by selling other people’s stuff online!

Affiliate Team