Jake Baillie is moderating this panel.
Elisabeth Archambault was first up, her aka is buckworks. She is not anyone's super affiliate. She pays more in taxes then what she earned teaching in a community college. Content for affiliates... Optimizing an affiliate site is not a whole lot different from optimizing a normal site. Good content is critical in affiliate marketing. You must do your home work, keyword research, market research. You need to know SEO. Content gives you something to work with. Site factors includes spiderable, PageRank flow and internal anchor text. Off page factors include inbound links, quality and quantity, anchor text and theme of linking pages. Design your site for accessibility; layouts and labels that make sense to an audible browser reader also tend to please spiders. Good content is a magnet for links. Content allows for easier link dev, more spontaneous links, more offline mentions and more spider food. Content is real info for real people, entertainment works, uniqueness count and quality counts. It is important to find ways to promote your site outside of the search engines. Good content makes this task easier. Often good content gets stolen, copyscape.com can be a huge article, and learn how the DMCA process works. She said it all boils down to targeting.
John Coronella is now up. He quotes the Wikipedia for what is an affiliate, he shortened it and said an affiliate is just a middle man. He shows his wife's typical recent purchase, and how she clicked on an affiliate link to go through there. Affiliate models for the purchase cycle make it go through more channels, i.e. the middle man. He is worried that they will squeeze out the middle people, including affiliates. he explains that online marketing is far from mature. As the market matures, the market will squeeze people out. He shows some inefficiencies in the current market (i.e. from one adsense site to an other). There will be vertical integration like CPA models. Blocking paths through the market with banning multiple affiliate in adwords and quality score updates. Good news is that it is massively inefficient, and there is risk but lots of opportunity. The bad news is it is not going to last. Long term strategy; make the market efficient in a way you can control it. Become the direct navigation with quality content and add value. Give the SE's reason not to cut you out and cut out the rest.
David Rivero from JoeBucks.com is next up. Difference between affiliate programs and affiliate networks. You want to leave out the different layers where the money is getting filtered, go directly to the merchant. Sign up with the affiliate programs that pay the most, someone who you can contact, companies that have a good track record, make sure they have products that sell, 800 numbers, call center, etc. Tried to get paid twice per month, build a relationship with your affiliate, make sure you have different payment methods, and make sure they dont have a minimum requirement. Make sure the affiliate lets you optimize your site, build a brand on your domain, don't just send directly to the affiliate link. Control your exit traffic. Make sure they have multiple payment options for the customer. Be careful where you buy traffic, beware of fraud protection, test the traffic. Test banner networks, email blast, adware traffic and by from the big three PPC engines. Build out product or service review sites. Info about a particular product or service. Compare different products or services. Rate them on a grading scale. Find your niche market. Sign up for multiple affiliate programs.
Matt Tuens from CKMG. He quickly summarizes what everyone said before starting his presentation. Key to success is the depth, breath and variety of your content. This will drive organic ranks, quality traffic and conversions. Super Affiliate secrets... Build your success, run the site like a business, tremendous number of articles and leverage your content. It is common sense, but many affiliates don't do that. You need to invest, strategize, market and brand with your site using content. The more content is better. Make your site a destination site, organic listings and targeted traffic. Encourage linking. Increase conversions. Differentiate your competitors. Fill your site with hundreds of short informational articles, longer detailed articles, landing pages, and make a blog. You want your content to help your visitors through the decision making process. Set up your navigation to help the visitor down the buying path. Get the word out about your site (press releases, etc.), grow every day, be customer centric. Leverage content on other sites, on industry sites, industry blogs and forums.
