Affiliate, SEO and PHP Coding Blog - OOOFF.com

If you haven’t guessed by now I’m not the kind of guy to give fish out, I’m a strong believer in the “Teach and man to fish” theory.

Not sure how this is going to work but I thought I was a great conversation on some of the basics of blackhat. Now this isn’t get rich quick stuff it’s more more focused on how to approach things and how to learn “how to do Blackhat” from a root base level. If you’re looking for the answers and a just do X, Y and Z and you’ll get rich this isn’t the post for you. Hell this isn’t the blog for you. Let me know what you think as this was about an hour conversation with some friends of mine on IRC.

All Names except mine have been changed to protect the innocent

************************************************

<Smaxor> ladies
* Joe has joined #cakes
<Joe> f*** 82 clicks yesterday not one f***IN conversion…f*** ppc i need to get into some blackhat sh**.
<Joe> nice shades
<Joe> yo man, point me in the right direction for getting sh**loads of traffic through BH techniques? im a coder too….
<Jerry> Joe, syndk8.net
<Joe> yeah i got that on my rss feed
<Joe> i guess right now, my main goal is to make some FAST cash to get me started, then i will start building up slower, but more reliable forms of profit
<Jerry> doesn’t work that way
<Jerry> you build slow so you can learn how to properly build fast
<Joe> there’s tons of methods damnit…blogging….arbitrage, i donno
<Jerry> well pick one and try it
<Joe> do autoblogs really work? i mean…most people only see $5 a week lmao
<Joe> or…most people i’ve talked to
<Jerry> if done properly they can make some money
<Joe> do you use wpomatic
<Jerry> no i write my own software always
<Joe> or autoblog
<Joe> oh ok
<Joe> think it’s better to slap adsense on them or some aff links
<Jerry> or both
<Joe> are directory submissions worth it
<Jerry> helps get indexed
<Joe> i heard about this SQUIRT sh**
<Smaxor> Eli’s a good guy
<Joe> yeah he’s very creative
<Joe> and a coder…f*** if i was creative, i’d have some dough because people on WF all the time say if you can code you should be makin some money
<Joe> so i must have somethin wrong with me goddamnit
<Smaxor> would you quit with the self hating
<Smaxor> that sh** gets old
<Joe> nah im not self hating
<Smaxor> <Joe> so i must have somethin wrong with me goddamnit
<Smaxor> that’s self hating
<Smaxor> now shouldn’t you be doing something to make some money
<Joe> yes i should
<Joe> don’t know exactly what though. f***.
<Joe> 82 mother f***in clicks yesterday not one conversion
<Smaxor> sounds like you suck at picking keywords
<Joe> this is why i need some f***in free BH traffic
<Joe> nah those same KW’s were converting well
<Smaxor> well what happened?
<Joe> maybe cuz it’s christmas time idk people are probably busy
<Smaxor> not to busy to click
<Smaxor> my conversions and traffic has gone up as we approached xmas
<Joe> maybe im just in a slump then, idk because it’s a free trial offer
<Joe> well they pay S + H
<Joe> Smaxor how did you learn BH
<Smaxor> I stopped talking on irc and reading forums and spent a few months doing nothing but watching the serps
<Smaxor> then reverse engineered what I saw on there
<Smaxor> that’s the only way to do blackhat
<Smaxor> reading forums and sh** isn’t going to get you anywhere as the really good stuff isn’t talked about
<Joe> and being creative, exploiting high-traffic sites
<Smaxor> nope
<Smaxor> none of that
<Smaxor> researching and seeing what other people are doing
<Smaxor> then copying it
<Joe> http://seoblackhat.com/
<Joe> $100 a month
<Smaxor> you’ll eventually learn your own ideas
<Joe> wonder if it’s worth it
<Smaxor> are you not f***ing listening to me
<Joe> im listening
<Smaxor> don’t ask a question then ask about something else
<Smaxor> no that’s a waste of “your” time ( not everyones just yours specifically )
<Joe> k
<Smaxor> if you want to learn blackhat do what I told you
<Joe> watch serps for months
<Joe> reverse engineer
<Smaxor> yep
<Smaxor> look at the high competition high payout niches
<Joe> education
<Smaxor> drugs, finance, ringtones
<Joe> my AM told me to try edu on ppc
<Joe> i bout slapped him
<Joe> only thing though, if i start getting BH traffic, im scared of getting banned from my aff networks
<Smaxor> quit being a pussy
<Joe> well i cant make money if i get banned from the aff networks :-\
<Jerry> there are tons of affiliate networks
<Jerry> most will warn you if you’re getting sh**ty traffic
<Joe> ok
<Smaxor> yeah blackhat traffic isn’t an issue usually unless you’re stupid about it
<Smaxor> and spamming links while you have the offer up
<Smaxor> and redirecting or some sh**
<Joe> hmm
<Carl> Smaxor - you should write a Blackhat Affiliate Playbook - similar to diorex’s, but with automation involved
<Smaxor> yeah there’s just to much to know
<Smaxor> to be honest
<Smaxor> there’s no playbook really
<Smaxor> casue there’s a million things you can do
<Smaxor> suppose I could write a playbook on sh** like read the serps
<Smaxor> but stuff evolves pretty quickly
<Smaxor> and I don’t give out direct info that’s working
<Smaxor> if I can still really exploit it then not worth publishing
<Smaxor> my blogs just for fun and helping people out, not worth losing money because I’m blogging about some sh**
<Jerry> curl tutorials are all anyone should need
<Jerry> if you can’t make money by using curl to scrape other websites then you probably aren’t creative enough for that type of stuff
<Mike> what about php?
* Mike just ordered that php book last night.
<Jerry> sigh
<Smaxor> honestly when I need something new to automate all I do is go to the serps and find what’s working then make it
<Jerry> curl/php
<Smaxor> honestly it’s all right there
<Mike> ohhh
* Mike nods.
<Mike> my b
<Smaxor> php is just a tool
<Jerry> yeah same
<Joe> (12:33:12) ~ (@Jerry) if you can’t make money by using curl to scrape other websites then you probably aren’t creative enough for that type of stuff
<Joe> true dat :-\ i know how to use php and curl and sh**
<Joe> just not f***in creative enough to know what to do with my goddamn skills
<Smaxor> shut the f*** up Joe I’m tired of hearing your whining
<Joe> hey, im a newb
<Joe> everyone was noob at some point
<Smaxor> Joe is a retard I told him go look at the serps but nooooooooo he just wants to whine
<Joe> im not whining homie
<Jerry> dude you are kinda whining, just go try some sh** and see what works, thats how everyone gets started
<Joe> and if i was a retard i wouldn’t even be in the business at age 16
<Joe> how could one profit off a script that creates a gmail or hotmail account
<Smaxor> dude
<Carl> you can sell it to me
<Smaxor> shouldn’t you be looking at the serps?
<Carl> if its php
<Carl> not the esrun one
<Carl> mine was Joe
<Joe> the one i make would probably have manual captcha solving
<Joe> because idk too much about captcha crackers
<Joe> or captcha solvers
<Carl> thats a bummer
<Smaxor> yeah the script to create stuff like gmail accounts is easy
<Smaxor> the captcha stuff is hard
<Joe> yes.
<Joe> ah f***
<Carl> Smaxor - hes on the right path…serps show a lot of sh** feeding to blogspot, which involves a gmail account (kinda)
<Carl> seems like the best way to make throwaway sites
<Joe> blogger creator
<Smaxor> so then start coding
<Joe> well. see the sad thing is, i’d code it, sell it for not that much, then people i’d sell it to would probably make a lot more money off of MY code
<Jerry> great attitude
<Joe> how? IDK
<Joe> im just tellin it like it is.
<Smaxor> is that more whining I hear?
<Smaxor> nah you’re telling it how you see it
<Smaxor> that’s not “how it is”
<Joe> dude im not tryin to f***in whine im just speculating on what will happen because ive seen it happen
<Smaxor> so cause soemthing has happened with some dipsh** in the past means it’ll happen to you?
<Smaxor> seriously you should get a job at Mc Donalds
<Smaxor> I’m being honest
<Smaxor> that’s what you think of yourself
<Joe> thanks bro.
<Smaxor> only being honest
<Smaxor> you need to pull yourself together and be a man
<Smaxor> decide you’re going to make something specific work
<Smaxor> then not quit until you do
<Joe> been trying that for 6 months
<Smaxor> and stop talking all this sh** about well poor me I’d probably do blah blah blah
<Joe> every since I joined WF
<Smaxor> that’s cause you’re not focusing
<Smaxor> you’re wasting a bunch of f***ing time trying 10 different things and talking in forums and on IRC
<Joe> im just trying to think of ideas on how i can write code that will benefit me.
<Joe> not other people.
<Smaxor> dude what did I tell you to do?
<Joe> i know look at the f***ing serps i been doing that
<Smaxor> not enough
<Joe> even read the goddamn wiki
<Smaxor> have you spent 8 hours a day staring at them for a month
<Smaxor> looking at all the different serps
<Smaxor> looking for things that keep popping up
<Smaxor> then investigating those thing?
<Joe> wish i could spend that much time
<Smaxor> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=MG5&q=buy+viagra&btnG=Search
<Joe> but i’ve got to go to f***ing goddamn school
<Smaxor> look at that serp result
<Smaxor> and tell me what you see
<Joe> alright
<Joe> i see a sh**load of sponsored results
<Smaxor> in the organics
<Joe> some blogs
<Smaxor> what about them
<Joe> medical sites
<Joe> holy sh**!
<Joe> look at the ps3forums result, click it
<Smaxor> what about it?
<Joe> dude is smart as f*** made a profile on buy viagra so it’d get indexed then i guess found an exploit to make the page redirect to his buy viagra pag
<Joe> e
<Joe> www.ps3forums.com/member.php?u=62801
<Mike`> lol
<Smaxor> hmm look at that 1 min later and all of a sudden you looked in the serps and found something
<Smaxor> shocker
<Mike`> that is pretty good
<Joe> yeah
<Smaxor> there’s more there
<Smaxor> a lot more
<Joe> vbulletin 3.6.8
<Smaxor> that you can find out from that one query
<Smaxor> there’s at least 3 strateies to be found from investigating those rankings
<Joe> dont see any public exploits for 3.6.8 so idk how the hell he did that redirect
<Joe> because vbulletin stops <script> tags
<Smaxor> so you don’t have to see exactlly how to do it
<Smaxor> who’s to say you couldn’t just use an image
<Smaxor> and a link
<Mike`> spam blog technorati
<Smaxor> with that rank
<Smaxor> yeah
<Smaxor> there’s another one
<Smaxor> if you look at that stuff enough they just jump out “Glaring spam”
<Joe> wonder how the f*** he got that rank
<Mike`> Viagra pharmacy which key above frank. So charge. Purchase cloud so heel. For heap in bandage. Here you search gesture that was fence often packet without bake or again spoon or loss, lash was title sometime brush.
<Mike`> lol
<Mike`> nice post
<Mike`> sounds like a translation went bad.
<Joe> yeah how the hell did a dude create a blogspot and get like third in the serps
<Joe> mofo is probably BANKIN
<Smaxor> maybe you should do some reasearch on it
<Smaxor> the answer is there
<Joe> only thing i see is keyword stuffing
<Smaxor> do you know anything about seo
<Joe> and general SEO - h1 tags, meta tags
<Smaxor> if not you need to spend some time understanding seo
<Joe> i know SEO
<Smaxor> then how do you rank for sh**?
<Joe> h1 tags, meta tags, keyword stuffing
<Joe> getting inbund links
<Smaxor> ok
<Joe> relevant inbound links
<Smaxor> well then it sounds liek that might be a good thing to look at right?
<Joe> getting links
<Smaxor> what links they might be getting?
<Joe> relevant ones
<Joe> that dude with the third serp
<Joe> on buy viagra
<Joe> he spams his site on government sites
<Joe> .gov sites
<Joe> looks like .gov site links are really important
<Joe> http://www.google.com/search?q=link:+meikoante.blogspot.com&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&start=10&sa=N
<Smaxor> as I said, if you do what I say, looking in the serps, then you’ll learn if you’re looking for the answers anywhere but in the serps you’re wasting your time
<Joe> yes i think i have a very small idea what you mean, but when i look at the serps i dont know what im looking for.
<Joe> i just see results. results for my query
<Carl> what results ’shouldnt’ be there…in your eyes
<Carl> those are usually the ones you want to replicate
<Joe> ah
<Smaxor> well what’s our goal? to get to those positions right? so how about copy what they’re doing and you will probably end up at your goal
<Smaxor> it’s a fairly simple concept really
<Joe> Smaxor
<Joe> do you think landing pages are important
<Joe> or, do you think it’s cool to grab a domain and have it redirect to the merchant LP
<Joe> and then link spam the f*** out of the domain you bought
<Smaxor> I think it makes sense to copy what you see working if you wnat the same result
<Joe> k i gonna buy domain spam the domain and have it do a redirect
<Smaxor> is that what you see happening there?
<Joe> uh, im not sure
<Joe> how do domain redirects appear in serps
<Joe> does it just show the content of the redirected page
<Smaxor> well there’s a lot of ways and all the answers are in the same location
<Smaxor> become a detective
<Smaxor> and stop asking so many god damn questinos
<Jerry> haha that dude got #3 for buy viagra by parasite hosting on technorati
<Jerry> gg
<Smaxor> ;
<Smaxor> )
<Smaxor> like I said there’s a lot to learn just in that one query
<Joe> f***
<Joe> im still trying to figure out how that mother f***er got to google first page for buy viagra on a mother f***ing ps3forums
<Joe> http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:epJ4wsrrH5kJ:www.ps3forums.com/member.php%3Fu%3D62801+buy+viagra&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us&client=firefox-a
<Joe> tis google cache
<Joe> look at that, his join date. one week ago, and he’s on the first page of google for the most saturated niche ever
<Joe> UN f***ING BELIEVABLE
<Smaxor> amazing what you find in the serps ain’t it
<Joe> yes.
<Joe> now i want to know how he did it
<Smaxor> no forums talk about that sh** do they
<Joe> not ps3 forums
<Joe> but still he got to first page!
<Jerry> he means no seo forums talk about how he did that
<Smaxor> I mean you wouldn’t find that sh** out unles you look at the serps
<Smaxor> no one is going to give you the answer on a seo forum how to do that kind of stuff
<Smaxor> you have to research it and test
<Joe> yeah i know i wouldn’t find it out unless i looked in the serps
<Joe> but the serps dont tell me how the f*** he did it :-\
<Smaxor> of course they do
<Smaxor> OF COURSE THEY DO
<Joe> i been thinking, and i seriously have no f***in clue, how the hell a dude can register on a ps3 forum, put a banner up in his sig, and get on the fron
<Joe> t page in one week
<Jerry> so figure it out =)
<Joe> there gotta be somethin im missin
<Jerry> the answer isn’t in this channel, that’s for sure
<Joe> indeed.
<Joe> but working alone is for idiots, thats why im in here. to talk to and learn from people who have more experience than me
<Jerry> theres a fine line between bouncing ideas off someone else and begging for help
<Jerry> if you haven’t tried to do it yet you have no idea if it works or not
<Jerry> just go try sh** dude
<Jerry> how many sites have you made to test any of this stuff today?
<Jerry> my guess is 0
<Smaxor> right however you have to have something to contribute to the conversation before you can even have a conversation
<Smaxor> otherwise you’re just leeching
<Joe> (15:05:45) ~ (@Jerry) how many sites have you made to test any of this stuff today?
<Joe> (15:05:49) ~ (@Jerry) my guess is 0
<Joe> i been building a blog.
<Smaxor> how do you consider doing one thing a test
<Smaxor> build 50 blogs, do them all differently and see what works the best
<Joe> because im sending traffic to it.
<Smaxor> all taken from ideas you see in the serps
<Joe> cant build 50 blogs in one day
<Joe> not real ones anyway
<Joe> maybe autoblogs
<Jerry> you can build more than you currently are if you aren’t chatting in here =)
<Smaxor> yuo can pretty easily build 10 blogs a day using stock templates
<Smaxor> and in 5 days you have 50
<Smaxor> now that’s all 100% manual
<Joe> yes.
<Joe> but a blog is nothing
<Joe> without posts
<Smaxor> right
<Joe> takes me a while to pump out a good, well thought out, decent post
<Smaxor> then post to them every 2 weeks
<Smaxor> so that’s 25 posts a week
<Smaxor> or about 3 posts a day
<Smaxor> if you can do more do more
<Joe> yes but the blog im building right now, is all built around one offer im promoting
<Joe> i donno how blogs do as LP’s
<Joe> so im gonna test it versus the merchant page.
<Smaxor> where did you see that idea working and copy it from?
<Joe> nowhere because im like one of 5 people who are promoting it
<Joe> not that many people are promoting it
<Smaxor> where did you see that strategy working specifically that you copied it from, not where did you see the offer
<Joe> nowhere, because not that many people are promoting it
<Joe> so im testing to see if it will work or not
<Smaxor> nevermind
<Smaxor> you don’t get it
<Smaxor> I’m done with you
<Joe> Smaxor i do get it, and im telling you there’s no one to f***in copy from because no one is f***in promoting it
<Joe> i’ve seen this strategy work in OTHER niches
<Joe> but not in this particular one. so im gonna see how it does because i’ve seen it work in other areas
<Smaxor> I didn’t say anything about the niche EVER
<Smaxor> as I never do
<Smaxor> because most of the time it’s not the “Niche” that makes money it’s the system that promotes it
<Joe> in this case, a blog
<Smaxor> once you have the right “System” you can stuff in any niche
<Joe> agreed.
<Joe> right now, the gist of what im doing, is testing: PPC - > Blog - > Merchant VS. PPC - > Redirect-2-Merchant
<Smaxor> so we return to where we started what blog that someone is advertising did you copy your system from?
<Joe> uh, when you told me to look at the serps for buy viagra
<Joe> the third result was a blog.
<Smaxor> I never look at the hard niches and see someone paying for PPC to a blog
<Smaxor> just doesn’t happen
<Smaxor> so sounds like a piss poor system to me
<Joe> but it’s not a hard niche
<Smaxor> the serps is blackhat
<Smaxor> you’re talking about PPC
<Smaxor> they’re 100% different
<Joe> well i wanna do both
<Smaxor> focus
<Joe> any traffic i can take i will get
<Smaxor> back to where we started
<Joe> i mean any traffic i can get i will take
<Joe> i’ve BEEN doing ppc but i also want to try other things, hence BH
<Smaxor> then you’ll fail at them all
<Smaxor> until you become a pro at one don’t do anything else
<Smaxor> or you’ll spin your wheels
<Joe> okay.
Let me know what you think.

Success,
Smaxor

As you probably know one of the best places to find keywords for you campaigns is in you own logs or tracking. And the most up to date info is tracking the people come to your site via search queries. Now you can track these in your your logs or a click tracking system like the one I’ve been laying out on here. One strategy I like to use, on Adwords for doing keyword research is to bid on single word terms. However to do this you don’t want to use your main account. I’d suggest setting up a new junk account and dumping in all the single words you can like “car” or “house” using phrase match and exact match. Then bid a decent amount so you make it up to the first page. These keywords aren’t that hard to get for fairly cheap as it’s hard to maintain a good CTR and not get QS’d out. Then run it as long as they let you until you get Quality Score screwed. Then go through your logs and pull all the queries out and look for themes and ideas of stuff that might bring traffic. Real search data is gold compared to those crappy keyword tools like spyfu or keywordspy.

For those of you using my click tracking script I’m going to share the code for scraping out the queries from google. With this you can pull the keywords that converted or any keywords from any click that came to your site. If you want conversions just add a http://www.domain.com/queryscript.php?type=conv


<?

dbconnect();

$sql = "SELECT DISTINCT(clicks.referer) FROM clicks, conversions WHERE ";
if($_GET['type'] == 'conv'){
$sql .= "clicks.id = conversions.click_id AND ";
}
$sql .= "
clicks.source = 'ggl'
AND clicks.country = 'uk'
AND clicks.referer LIKE '%christmas%'
AND clicks.matchtype = 'e'
ORDER BY clicks.id DESC";

$q = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
$myarray = array();
while ($ref = mysql_fetch_assoc($q))
{
$ref = explode("?",$ref['referer']);
parse_str($ref[1],$output);
if(isset($output['q']))
{
$qstr = strtolower($output['q']);
}elseif (isset($output['p'])){
$qstr = $output['p'];
}


  if(isset($qstr))
{
$ex = array_key_exists($qstr,$myarray);
if($ex)
{
$myarray[$qstr] = $myarray[$qstr] + 1;
}else{
$myarray[$qstr] = 1;
}
}
unset($qstr);
}

sort($myarray);
foreach($myarray as $keyw=>$value){
//echo "$keyw"; this is if you just want the query for cutting and pasting
echo "$keyw,$value"; // this is if you want the keyword with the count of the number of queries it showed in.
}
?>

This is pretty crude and ripped right from my own system. But it’ll pull the keywords from the queries in the referers from Google.

Take these queries and dump them into their own campaign with exact match and phrase match only. No Broad match. And then watch what happens and make you’re adjustments from there. In another month do it again. You’ll come up with all kinds of good words you never would have thought of on your own.

Diorex’s How to measure a niche post. 

In the comments of my Affiliate Playbook post, I posted a link to SEO Blackhat’s list of 140 popular niches, by the looks of my outbound traffic, you guys were very intrigued by this.

Wanted to re-link to it for those who might not have seen it and follow-up with some comments about things to avoid or look for in a new niche.

Avoid -

·  If you read the name of the niche and a few keywords dont pop-into your head immediately, you should probably not pursue it. Just about any product or niche will have hundred or possibly thousands of keywords, but if you cannot come up with the 5-10 high volume searches immediately, I would say move on.

·  Follow-up this brief brainstorms with Google searches and pay attention to the ads. Are you going to be competing against common every day brand names or a bunch of mom and pops? I would discount the top 3 names and focus on how hard it is going to be to break into the second tier positions. Don’t let 1 or 2 brand names scare you, but if you look in 5th position and it is a fortune 500 company, then I might be tempted to move on.

·  You do not want to be competing against the manufacturers of the product, even if they are not brand names, if there are no affiliates in the space that is probably a bad sign. The reverse is true, if it almost entirely affiliates (like ringtones) then it is probably pretty crowded and as a little guy without a white label/special payout you are already off to a bad start

·  Is is it a product you know anything about? I dont think that unmarried college age guys are going to be rockstars at promoting a menopause product or even a baby shower list. Look to your life experiences for things you naturally know a little bit about. Sure you can learn, but why set yourself up for a longer more difficult road.

·  By the same token, I would also avoid things that have enormous keyword lists. Ringtones, DVDs, Books etc. It just means a ton of optimization and a much more difficult road to start with. If you are looking at more than 5-10 ad copies to start, move on. Try to group your keywords for similar themes, it makes testing easier and testing is where you should be making your money.

Stuff to look for:

·  Products that are not actually a product. If someone needs to pay for shipping or merchant might be out of stock or it cannot be shipped to the buyer quickly enough, then you may lose sales despite bringing a ready buyer to a merchant.

·  An established affiliate program - if you are having to explain what an affiliate program is to a merchant you are on a slippery slope. You don’t want to be the beta tester.

·  At least 2-3 affiliate programs that might compete against you and bid for your services. If you are the 800 lb. gorilla in a one affiliate program space you dont have nearly the leverage as if there were 2-3 others competing for your attention.

·  Possibility to rev share. Subscriptions are great like Shoemoney preaches. Services where almost 100% of the revenue is profit are great. If it is a high dollar product with a low margin, you are only going to get a small sliver of the sale price.

·  A payout that is north of $10. You simply cannot scale nickel clicks and a $2 payout. You are subject to even small fluctuations in search engine pricing or competition.

·  Areas where you can find 2-3 really good URLs available. Short, sweet and keyword rich. Probably 50% or more of your success is going to be related to the URL, no reason not to consider what you might use before you start. I have heard lots of stories of people building everything they need and then looking for a good URL. Thats the wrong order. If $50-$100 to register a bunch of URLs is more than you can invest, I dont know how realistic your success chances are.

I am going to leave you with this thought, I have shared many times before. If you are picking a niche because you hear “so and so” is making a killing in it without regard for any of the above factors then you are setting yourself up for failure. You should be entering a niche because you have some sort of advantage or knowledge rather than because you are following the pack.

I am sure there are lots more things others can add to these lists based upon personal experience - feel free to share em.

This entry was posted on December 1, 2007 at 8:22 pm and is filed under PPC, paid search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I don’t want credit for this it was written by a very smart fellow named Diorex who’s blog isn’t any longer online. So I thought I’d repost it as a lot of my readers have asked for it. Not sure what happened to his blog but here’s the Affiliate Playbook post from it.

The Affiliate Playbook

I have been asked how to scale probably 100 times since I started blogging. It has been a long time since I have tried to scale that I might not be the right person to ask, but I have done it 3 different times in 3 different ways for paid search campaigns over the last 5+ years. So forgive me if this game plan is hopelessly outdated or too brutally honest.

Our goal - starting with a single niche and the standard affiliate payout transform into a super-affiliate making 6+ figures a month.

Some caveats:

·  This assumes that you are not in a terribly crowded field, so mortgages, payday loans, satellite, ringtones and a few other ‘flavor of the month’ affiliate campaigns probably won’t work on this plan.

·  This is not going to work on a $2.00 zip submit payout, so please don’t ask. If you dont have a starting payout north of $10 it is probably best to pick a different product.

·  The goal is sufficient (7+ figures per year) that I am not even going to try and pretend to do this with $2,000. I had lots of money in the bank each time I started over and invested significant sums to get scale with each.

·  I am not going to live in my mothers basement and hope that the affiliate manager at my merchant notices me and rewards me with a higher payout, I am going to meet the senior guys at the network, then the affiliate manager at the merchant and then the affiliate managers director or VP and impress them that I can help them achieve and exceed aggressive goals. In short I am in a real business that happens to be online, but I am not a hermit crab.

Here is what needs to be in place to start:

·  We have located a product with a decent payout, that is not already stuffed with affiliates, offered by at least 2-3 respectable networks.

·  We have designed or paid an expert to design a great landing page with good usability and website surrounding it with good content and at least 8-10 pages deep of keyword rich content that is unique to my site that will pass all sniffs of the quality score test because it is quality and relevant.

·  We have some good tracking in place so that I can determine ROI by keyword.

·  We actually took the time to create well thought out ad copy unique to my high value keywords.

·  We did not jam tens of thousands of keywords into one adgroup or campaign and then wait to see which ones work.

·  We approached this with pride of ownership, something where quality of work shines through, nobody is going to call this crap.

·  We came to the party with 3-6 hours every day to tweak and monitor this campaign, and not just for the first week but for the next 12-18 months. 7 days a week, holidays, weekends, when I am out of town, when I feel like shit and when my buddies are out doing something a lot more fun.

·  We have a solid credit line dedicated just to this, and I dont mean buying 30″ dual monitors and Herman Miller chairs before I ever make a penny all those awesome systems you see online were bought after the fact not before.

If you cant, wont or dont know how to do any of the above, Stop reading. The rest won’t help you one bit.

So we now have a single affiliate offer at standard commission with well thought out ad copy, landing pages and some money ready to turn on our adwords campaign.

·  My first goal is to just get on the networks radar, let them know who I am, do enough volume that my account manager does not have to figure out who I am, get me on his radar. To do this I need to drive consistent steady volume. Anyone can be a flash in the pan and bid to first place and lose a ton of money and then fade away. They see it all the time, and are not going to be impressed. Instead show them consistent steady volume, maybe do this with just a few high converting keywords, or lots of cheaper long tail ones, maybe just bid to 9-10th place on the short tail stuff. Our goal is to lose as little as possible while still being consistent.

·  At this stage, no way am I going to get anything like a white label or even an invite to dinner when my affiliate manager is in town. I have a few limited options to test. The first thing is the display URL. I want something that describes the product generically (dont infringe on copyrights) in a short of way as possible using high volume keywords. Widgets.com is probably not going to be available to you. Try WidgetsDeluxe, WidgetsFast, WidgetsEtc. Take your primary keyword and get 5-7 short and sweet URL’s and test them in rotation using Google ad copy testing tool. 1 or 2 of these is going to perform better than the rest. This will take you from slight loser to slight winner. Increase bids accordingly until you are back to slight loser

·  So with a little bit of traffic we probably just increased volume by 20% or more just by fiddling with the display URL and then bumping bids. With that small bump in volume over the levels your network was used to seeing, approach them about a better payout. You will probably get it since you have established consistent volume and are not just a flash in the pan, dont ask for a bump before you prove anything.

·  With the 10% or so boost in payout, dump those revenues back into your bids. You are probably now 4-6 weeks in and are down a couple of grand and you are probably now in the bottom of the middle of the results. Now is the time to add in Yahoo and MSN. MSN will convert well but provide low volume, Yahoo will convert worse in most cases and be 1/4 to 1/3 of the volume of Google. Go back to your network again and get another small bump. You might need to play 1 network vs. another. Dont be untruthful about what a payout is being offerred, it is a small community and you dont want to burn bridges or be seen as a liar. Get that 2nd bump and now you are 20% or so higher than you were before.

·  It is now time to test ad copy. Always start with things on Google since your test volume is Clicks/impressions rather than Conversions/clicks. Until you have good volume it is important to test what you can get answers on and not eat up tons of test bandwidth. Although CTR is important, be sure to drill down to conversion rate per test since that is ultimately what matters.

·  You have now gotten 2 bumps from networks and are probably not going to get a ton more since they only have so much to give. You should be 3+ months in, plenty of time to have hit a pubcon or ad:tech or SES or just arranged an onsite meeting with the affiliate marketing manager for the product you are working on. Start by email, then work your way up to an occasional IM and eventually phone and in person meetings. Your goal is get your foot in the door and remove the affiliate network from the picture and get them to agree to a white label situation. This may take months, so get cracking early on this. Your white label will get you 10% increase in conversion overnight.

·  Either right before or right after you get the white label (at the very least be in talks with them) start aggressively testing landing pages. Start with 2 or more radically different designs and then pick a design winner and then test other elements like hero shots, call to actions, button language, placement of items on the page. Before starting this, you should have invested in SSL certificates and be landing in a secure environment and displaying the security seals prominently to let visitors know you are serious. If you cannot get a 30-50% increase in conversion with your landing page, you are not trying hard enough.

·  Between the 10% security seal boost, the 10% white label boost, the 30% boost to conversion from testing the page, you should now be pulling yourself back to even and even turning a small profit, dont spend it just yet though. Just like with the affiliate network, you need to establish a baseline of consistent results where the merchant starts to assume your volume is always going to be there.

·  You have worked with the merchant for 2-3 months and they are treating your volume like their volume (trust me this will happen). You have flown to corporate HQ and met the director or VP who the affiliate manager reports to, you are now negotiating with him rather than through the affiliate manager who has no real power in most cases. You need to let it be known that you could drive a lot more volume with a decent sized payout increase. They will salivate at the idea of volume, but will also be hesitant to give you a big boost. At the same time you are seducing the VP, you are making inquiries to one of your largest competitors about moving your volume over, you want to get a white label from them from the start (they are poaching an affiliate which is different than working with a small guy). Before you move your volume over, you call the VP at your original merchant and “give him a heads up” that you are going to test XYZ (tell them the name) for a few days, but you dont want him to worry too much, you will turn the volume back on in a few days, worst case a few weeks. You have now caused him to sweat and think that he might lose you. He has already budgeted in your volume and those resulting profits to his boss, he has probably mentioned to his boss that their could be more volume if they were willing to pay up. Now the choice almost becomes nothing from you or pay you more.

·  In almost all circumstances, you will probably want to work long term with the same company and not jump around to the highest pay out all of the time. That does not mean you don’t flirt with the others and even have a few “test runs” for a few weeks every so often. Don’t seem fickle or emotional, just act like you are a businessman (which you are) and you are looking out for your own interests as good business (which it is) and you will soon be viewed as a strategic partner rather than an affiliate.

·  At some point it will probably make sense to go to some sort of tiered pricing structure. Make sure you can hit these targets. Do not get paid $x for first 10,000 units and $y for units 10,001 - 15,000 and $z for 15,001+. Instead you want to hit a tier and get paid retroactive to the first unit. They will resist, but this is imperative for you. It means that sometimes you can take a loss per unit the last few days of the month and drive a ton of volume in order to hit your tier so you make a greater overall profit. The reason this is important is that the merchant sees these volume surges and starts thinking how they can get them every day instead of just the last 3-4 days of the month, then you are on for another round of negotiations. Always have a tier you have not yet met. When you start hitting the last tier, time to start negotiating for a new tier.

·  In time, the merchant will get addicted to your business, they will spread their overhead across all of their traffic (much of which is really your traffic) and start seeing economies of scale. This is when you really have leverage. Dont be a bad business partner, just dont be a meek one either.

·  The last 4-5 bullets I have not mentioned continual testing of things like the form, possible cross-sells, gathering an email list, retargeting, and a whole host of other stuff. Our philosophy is that we have to increase conversion by 20% each year to just stand still, once you start standing still, others start to pass you and you start to lose your leverage. Once you lose leverage, it is almost impossible to get it back. Never stop testing.

OK I want to thank both of the people who made it to the bottom of this post. It is obviously not exhaustive, but it is a reasonable series of steps for how to start as a dinky small fry affiliate today and 18-24 months from now be writing your own blog and posting a big check. Of course you will be doing so well you might also think, being rich and unknown with no competition may just be better than rich and famous with 100 new people entering your space hellbent on killing your margins…

I don’t like to post random stuff much but this video about the current internet bubble just about killed me. Check it out if you get a chance

MetaCafe - Here Comes another Internet Bubble

Sorry for the long time between posts. Just things have been very busy lately. Here’s an update to the click tracking code for tracking your conversions to include yahoo and msn pay per click. I just pulled this direct out of my system. This also includes a way to exclude bots by IP. Using the list from iplists.com I in a file called ip_list.txt in the same directory as you tracking file. So that your tracking doesn’t record bot visits. Below have included the updated sql schema for click tracking, it’s a little messy and could be better but just haven’t had time to improve it. If someone has a better click tracking schema around I’d be interested in seeing it.

So our urls to use to track

Yahoo Search Marketing:
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?s=ysm&n=1
To make this work properly you need to enable tracking URL’s in your account. This will pass all the appropriate variable automatically.

Google Adwords:
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?s=ggl&qs={keyword}&k={keyword}&n=1
This could be improved to scrape the query out of the referer and use that for the Query String in the table, it’s on the list.

MSN Adcenter:
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?k={Keyword}&s=msn&qs={QueryString}&mt={MatchType}&oii={OrderItemId}&ai={AdId}&n=1

<?
$keyword = addslashes(trim($_GET['k']));
session_start();
DEFINE('DB_HOST','host');
DEFINE('DB_USER','username');
DEFINE('DB_PASS','password');
DEFINE('DB_PRIMARY','tracking');
@mysql_connect(DB_HOST,DB_USER,DB_PASS);
@mysql_select_db(DB_PRIMARY);
if(mysql_ping() == true)
{
if(!isset($_SESSION['id']))
{
// Server variables
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$useragent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$source = addslashes(trim($_GET['s']));
$site = addslashes(trim($site));
$niche = trim($_GET['n']);
if($niche == ''){ $niche = 1; }
$loc = trim($_GET['loc']);
if($loc == ""){ $loc = "us"; }
if($source != "ysm")
{
$keyword = str_ireplace("_"," ",$keyword);
$query = addslashes(trim($_GET['qs']));
$matchtype = addslashes(trim($_GET['mt']));
$item_id = addslashes(trim($_GET['oii']));
$ad_id = addslashes(trim($_GET['ai']));
$clickid = addslashes(trim($_GET['gclid']));
}else{
$query = addslashes(trim($_GET['OVRAW']));
$keyword = addslashes(trim($_GET['OVKEY']));
$matchtype = addslashes(trim($_GET['OVMTC']));
$ad_id = addslashes(trim($_GET['OVADID']));
}
if(!CheckBotIp($ip))
{
$sql = "INSERT INTO `clicks` (`keyword`,`source`,`ip`,`referer`,`useragent`,`time`,`site`,`querystring`,`matchtype`,`orderitemid`,`adid`,`clickid`,`niche`,`country`) VALUES ('$keyword','$source','$ip','$referer','$useragent',NOW(),'$site','$query','$matchtype','$item_id','$ad_id','$clickid','$niche','$loc')";
//echo $sql;
mysql_query($sql);// or die(mysql_error());
$id = mysql_insert_id();
$_SESSION['id'] = $id;
$_SESSION['keyword'] = $keyword;
$_SESSION['referer'] = $referer;
}
}else{
$id = $_SESSION['id'];
$keyword = $_SESSION['keyword'];
$referer = $_SESSION['referer'];
}
}
/**
* Functions
*/
function CheckBotIp($ip)
{
$flag = 1;
$ips = file("/home/ip_list.txt");
$ips = array_map("trim",$ips);
foreach ($ips as $listip)
{
if($ip == $listip)
{
return 1;
}
}
}
?>

Here’s the updated schema to record for all systems. As I mentioned before it’s crude and needs some work so if anyone wants to contribute I’d be happy to post it and give you credit.

– phpMyAdmin SQL Dump
– version 2.11.0-dev
– http://www.phpmyadmin.net
–
– Host: localhost
– Generation Time: Dec 14, 2007 at 02:34 PM
– Server version: 5.0.22
– PHP Version: 5.1.6

SET SQL_MODE=”NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO”;

–
– Database: `tracking`
–

– ——————————————————–

–
– Table structure for table `clicks`
–

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `clicks` (
`id` double NOT NULL auto_increment,
`keyword` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`source` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`ip` varchar(15) NOT NULL default ”,
`useragent` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`referer` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`time` datetime NOT NULL default ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00′,
`site` varchar(100) NOT NULL default ”,
`querystring` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`matchtype` char(2) NOT NULL default ”,
`orderitemid` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`adid` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
`medium` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`network` varchar(10) NOT NULL,
`clickid` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`niche` int(11) NOT NULL,
`country` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `medium` (`medium`),
KEY `source` (`source`),
KEY `time` (`time`),
KEY `useragent` (`useragent`),
KEY `country` (`country`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=0;

– ——————————————————–

–
– Table structure for table `conversions`
–

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `conversions` (
`id` double NOT NULL auto_increment,
`click_id` double NOT NULL,
`source` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`date` date NOT NULL,
`campaign` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`campiagnID` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`transactionID` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`lineitemID` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`commission` decimal(10,2) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
UNIQUE KEY `transactionID` (`transactionID`),
KEY `click_id` (`click_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=0;