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About 18 months ago, I wrote what I consider to be the best post I’ve ever written on the topic of affiliate marketing, how to survive the affiliate evolution.
When I say that I wrote out my business plan and posted it on my blog in that post, I’m not kidding. And that statement is still true today. Yet, even though I gave out my business plan, I’d bet I can count on one hand those who actually used it to full value.
When I discuss advanced affiliate marketing, I often suggest creating affiliate brands instead of affiliate sites, as I did in that post 18 months ago:
Start buying brandable and not keyword laden domains. If you can include a keyword, great, but branding is important and neccessary.
Differentiate yourself and add value. Let’s get one thing straight. Google doesn’t hate affiliate sites. Google hates shit affiliate sites. Treat your affiliate site like any “real business” and develop a point of difference.
The point of difference thing is something I’m asked about often. The point of difference is essentially your brand. By creating a point of difference, you’re creating a brand and branding is often what seperates the affiliate men from the boys (so to speak). I go a little into the difference between an affiliate site and an affiliate brand a during part of the video below:
If you’re still confused as to what an “affiliate brand” is or how to “make one”, why not learn from some successful examples.
Some “Famous” Affiliate Brands
Most people don’t realize that some of the bigger brands on the web are nothing more than affiliate sites… with a point of difference.
Lower My Bills
Lower My Bills offers folks the ability to try and lower their household bills by offering information and “quotes” on everything from cell phone service to auto insurance.
Lower My Bills started out as nothing more than an affiliate site and grew to become a brand featured in many national publications that now employs a full time staff and even runs their own affiliate program (hint, their volume is so high, they can demand higher rates from merchants than you can get as an “regular affiliate” - they pass those higher rates on to you but keep a portion of the difference).
Lower My Bills sells cellular phones through the PhoneDog.com affiliate program and offers auto insurance quotes as an affiliate of Geico and Progressive.
The site has hundreds of pages of unique content and at the time it was rising to fame, had taken a point of difference of being a site where you could “lower your household bills” instead of being yet another site you could buy a cell phone from. According to Compete.com, variations of their brand name accounts for three of their top ten search phrases and the word “lowermybills” gets 10K searches a month according to the approx avg search volume listed for the phrase in the Google Adwords keyword tool.
Even with 20,000 links, an Alexa rank of 20K and the ability to say they’re owned by Experian, Lower My Bills is still at its core, still an affiliate site.
Epinions / Shopping.com
Epinions (owned by Shopping.com) and the actual Shopping.com site both pretty much sell everything under the sun, all through affiliate links. Essentially, Epinions and Shopping.com are both online mall datafeed sites, using the same feed arranged a bit differently.
For Epinions, their core point of difference from every other “online mall” was user generated content (before it was all the rage) in the form of product reviews left by consumers. That was and still for the most part is, all that separated them from any other affiliate who took every affiliate feed they could find (or Shopping.com’s own available feed) and mashed them all together into one massive online mall.
The core point of difference for Shopping.com, is well, its domain name. Sometimes you can work for a POD, sometimes you can simply purchase it (ok, and they also have a few in depth buying guides).
Shopping.com and Epinions are two nearly identical affiliate feed sites, but because they have branded themselves (being owned by eBay probably doesn’t hurt either, but remember, they didn’t start out with that) as the top destination for shopping (Shopping.com) and product reviews (Epinions), they’re able to rank healthily in Google.
Shopping.com has a top 500 Alexa rank and according to compete.com, variations of their domain name (with the .com in it) are two of their top three referrers (though Google shows “not enough data” when you do a search on shopping.com, Google also shows “not enough data” when you do a search on Google.com too).
Epinions has an Alexa rank of 2K and according to compete.com, variations of their brand epinions are three of their top four keywords and the word “epinions” gets 165K searches a month according to the approx avg search volume listed for the phrase in the Google Adwords keyword tool.
Not bad for a couple of (and nearly identical) affiliate datafeed mashup sites.
Bankrate
One of the most respected sites in the financial field, Bankrate branded itself by providing fantastic content on a level that wasn’t common when they started doing so. Like most good sites, Bankrate isn’t solely dependent on one income stream or even one income style. They make money via CPM advertisements, contextual advertising and, yep, affiliate programs.
Bankrate’s entire credit card section is nothing more than an affiliate feed of the NCS Reporting yet their doorway to those affiliate listings has zero problem ranking in Google for competitive terms.
Bankrate has an Alexa rank of 2200 and according to compete.com, variations of their brand bankrate are their two top keywords and the word “bankrate” gets 301K searches a month according to the approx avg search volume listed for the phrase in the Google Adwords keyword tool. Publicly traded, Bankrate has 160+ employees, does over 80 million a year in revenue and yes, Bankrate is also an affiliate marketer.
Advanced Affiliate Marketing
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with what the sites above have done for themselves and the fact that they are affiliates in no way demeans their brand or success. Hell, I work daily to try and achieve the same success they have by building up various brands of my own. But this is what I mean when I say “branded affiliate sites” or discuss “advanced affiliate marketing”. Working to differentiate your site, add value and create a brand.
Of course, these are extreme success stories (and proof that yes, Virginia, you can not only make an income, but you can support and entire company on affiliate marketing), but there is no reason you can’t create the next extreme success story. And even if you can only create the next “medium” or “small” success story, it will still be a lucrative story to tell.
The important thing to realize is that affiliate marketing has evolved. You’re going to need to learn how to evolve with it and how to create an affiliate brand, even if it is a small brand if you want to stay viable and have a place in the future online world.
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Well, this is an eye-opener. This stuff is on a whole new level compared to what most people think when they think affiliate marketing (and of course that’s your whole point). I get the affiliate “micro-brand” site thing. This is big food for thought.
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Would you say then that it easily (or *easier*) works the other way; from strong site/brand/blog –> affiliate? Or does good affiliate marketing always come before: get the idea, find and carve the niche, position the brand, make money?
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It seems affiliate marketing has matured, but still has a reputation as “get rich quick” or even sleazy? So while the bar has been raised for anyone hoping to make a decent income, the perception can still be very much in the spam corner. Great post and keep up the good work fighting webmaster welfare ;)
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@Ruud of course it works the other way. Many a site was created as a hobby, got a shitload of traffic and became affiliate marketers as a result. But it also happens deliberately as well - and that is what most people fail to realize. LMB and Epinions/Shopping.com all started out as affiliate sites, not as sites that “fell” into affiliate marketing - Bankrate you might be able to lump into the latter. Most of my readers are looking to enter affiliate marketing deliberately and aren’t planning on accidentally falling in. ;-)
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how about expedia.com, hotels.com, travelocity.com, could those be counted as well?
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Yep… tripadvisor.com is a really nice example.
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Could we go as far as Apple being a power-house affiliate with their itunes? yeah, they make alot of i-stuff, but paying a percentage to the record companies per downloaded DRM protected song is a great niche..
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I wonder if Mint.com would be included (in their money saving area, they say “Mint automatically compares your bank account and credit card rates and awards to thousands of offers—finding the typical user $1,000 in savings.”)
if so, they’ve done one helluva job with branding and promotion. Granted, it was all built around a big TOOL, but perhaps that’s also something to consider: what if you can create a tool or service that improves people’s lives, but allows you ways to inject affiliate marketing streams into it as well? FOr sure it’s a riskier proposition, but after you’ve cut your teeth on some sites, it may be worth a look if you have a kick ass programmer on staff who can help make it happen.
If Mint is indeed in the affiliate marketing pool, I suspect part of their success is due a bit to how they come across as ‘helpful’ in promoting these external services, rather than pushy. Sort of like how Rae likes to do helpful review-based sites.
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@reese I haven’t played with the software, but if the software is free and if they were smart, they’d definitely be using an affiliate blueprint. :)
Hi, Rae:
Isn’t Amazon basically an affiliate site? I was there the other day, and it just me like a ton of bricks. I think they do have a warehouse for some products, but essentially they are like a giant affiliate site.
And what about all the shop comparison sites? I was on a site the other day, it is a t shirt search engine, and each merchant added is an affiliate. So when you go there to “search” for a t shirt, you then get directed to the merchant of said t shirt, and i thought to myself. Brilliant. Very very smart.
I can’t recall of the name, but it’s a pretty cool idea.
I think the main mistake people make when going into an affiliate network is thinking that all they have to do is put up a mediocre website, submit it to a few directories and bingo - thousands of people per day are going to click through from your site and make you millions in commissions.
I saw a speech by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library at the Web 2.0- Expo in NY and agreed totally with his passion and vision for his business - I think that’s what people forget sometimes - Affiliate marketing is a BUSINESS - not a get rich quick scheme - and needs the same amount of time and effort as a 9-5 job would (if not more!)
I think Reese is spot on with the Mint.com example, their business model is exactly how most should be created. Starting with a free service that is extremely helpful at managing and keeping everything together while being able to stay on top of your finances. Focus on brand recognition, such as their logo and ‘domain name’ and make sure that everything works well and efficiently. That’s an example of a company that has really created and taken a new market by storm!
Everyone likes the idea of get rich quick affiliate marketing, but in most cases it’s a long hard grind with little to few benifits and gains. When you hear about people like Amit Mehta, someone who’s made a VERY good reputation for himself and his Super Affiliate Mindset website I’m not surprised that he’s doing well. Reputation is more than half the battle with Affiliates.
Really enjoyed your video from PubCon, was really nice to hear and see you! Could comparethemarket.com and gocompare.com count?
Good post. Big UK sites like moneysavingexpert.com , moneysupermarket.com and travelsupermarket.com (the latter two part of a multi million pound publicly listed company (plc) are all basically giant affiliate sites for financial and other offers.
On a smaller scale there are some well known affiliate sites which have become brands, such as fatwallet.com, http://www.dealofday.com and flamingoworld.com
In the UK the big ‘cashback’ sites were all started by affiliates - they earn commissions from network overrides; adsense and/or annual membership fees. Examples include topcashback and quidco.
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When I brainstormed my domain name I thought about branding also. I asked myself- what is the most important thing that I wanted to do with this website?
Of course it would be great to have a keyword in the name but branding in the long run is much more important than the keyword in the domain name. Especially because ranking is more about keyword rich anchor text backlinks than anything else.
I love the fact that most of your articles focus the right thing which is having marketing in the forefront of your business plan and the SEO will follow.
Most people don’t have that mindset- very rare to find.
All the best,
Eren
Yes, every one can do it if he wants to do it. Some times success might take some time but hard work with dedication is the guarantee of success and needs a little bit of smart working techniques.