A Guide to Affiliate Marketing in Australia

Point blank, misspelling that leads to traffic and search engine rankings is often done accidentally. And while most larger sites quickly corrects the copy, considering it only to be an embarrassing typo, for your small website misspelling should be seen as an acclaimed and proven effective SEO method.

Some time ago I was writing a news post on my blog about the unfortunate passing of one of our times greatest fashion icons; Mr Yves Saint Laurent. The blog was only weeks old, had been indexed but of course wasn’t ranking on any keywords or getting any traffic due to its slim content and none existing backlinks.

But as I was setting the title I “accidentally” misspelled Yves, making it Ywes instead. And apparently as I mistakingly misspelled this mans name, so did a number of people when searching on Google. So all of a sudden I was ranking and getting traffic, even though I according to the strict laws of Google really shouldn’t be.

Typos - 900 searches & no competition

The number of visitors was not more than 50 but it is a heck of a lot more than if I would have corrected my accidental typo. “Ywes Saint Laurent” has an approximate search volume in coming months merely reaching 22 searches. “Yves Saint Lauren” without the t in the end has about 900 monthly searches.

People’s, like myself, inability to spell correctly can thus benefit your website. Try listing some common typos related to your website niche and research their potential traffic volume with Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool. If you want traffic now and not endure the potentially long and time consuming period of SEO - misspelling may get you high rankings on frequently searched keywords tomorrow.

Making money online used to pretty much require you to have your own Web site, products to sell and some marketing savvy. But a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.

But it’s hard to tell hype from the real deal. If you do a search on “make money online” and “making money online”, and much of the information out there is just promoting various information products, mostly about Internet marketing. I see why people sometimes ask, “Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts?”

So below is a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:

• Pay cash, not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money
• Don’t require you to have your own Web domain or your own products
• Don’t involve any hard-selling
• Aren’t just promoting more Internet marketing
• Give a good return on your time investment

In the interest of objectivity, none of the links below are affiliate links, and none of them have paid or provided any other consideration for their presence here. These are legitimate companies with business models that allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.

Writing

A growing number of sites will pay for your articles or blog posts. Associated Content and Helium will “pay for performance” based on page views for just about anything you want to write about. Articles on specific topics they’re looking for can earn direct payments up to about $200. The rates are probably low for established writers, but if you’re trying to break into the field and have time on your hands, they’re a great way to start. Also, a lot of companies are looking for part-time bloggers. They may pay per post or on a steady contract.

Start your own blog.

You don’t have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads. To make even more money from it, set up an affiliate program (see below) for books, music, etc., and insert your affiliate links whenever you refer to those items. You’ll have to get a lot of traffic to become a six-figure blogger, but pick an interesting topic, write well, tell all your friends, and you’re off to a good start.

Create topical resource hubs.

Are you an expert on a particular niche topic? Can you put together an overview of the topic and assemble some of the best resources on the topic from around the web? Then you can create topical hubs and get paid through sites like Squidoo, HugPages and Google Knol. Payments are based on a combination of ad revenue and affiliate fees. You’ll get higher rates doing it on your own, but these sites have a built-in supply of traffic and tools to make content creation easier.

Advertise other people’s products.

If you already have a Web site or a blog, look for vendors that offer related but non-competing products and see if they have an affiliate program. Stick to familiar products and brands - they’re easier to sell. To promote those products:

• Place simple text or graphical ads in appropriate places on your site
• Include links to purchase products you review or recommend in a blog, discussion forum or mailing list you control
• Create a dedicated sales page or Web site to promote a particular product

They all work - it just depends on how much time you have to spend on it and your level of expertise with Web design and marketing.

Microstock photography.

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to sell your photos for money. People are constantly in need of stock photography for websites, presentations, brochures and so on, and are willing to pay for the right image. People generally search for images on stock photography sites by keywords, not by photographer, so you have the same chance as anyone else of having your image picked. Just be careful that you don’t have images of trademarked brands, copyrighted art or people’s faces that are readily identifiable (unless you have a model release), but just about anything else is fair game, and I promise - you’d be amazed what people need pictures of, so don’t make any assumptions. If it’s a decent photo, upload it. Some sites to get you started include Fotolia, ShutterStock, Dreamstime and iStockphoto. The great thing about this is that it’s truly “set it and forget it”.

The above list is by no means comprehensive, but it highlights some of the new and interesting ways to make money online without investing any money, without having a product of your own, and without having expert sales and marketing skills. Most of all, unlike taking surveys or getting paid to read e-mail, the potential return on your time investment is substantial.

If you’ve been looking at getting into Affiliate Marketing but not quite sure how to get started on that website design then make sure you have a look at using Wordpress as your CMS/ design theme.

Wordpress is absolutely FREE of charge and can be installed in a few minutes if your web host has Fantastico as an option within their cPanel (ask your host if you are unsure). Also if you are looking to update the look and feel of your site you will find most updates and plugins available free of charge as well.

Wordpress is very intuitive to use and you can create highly targeted niche content sites to market affiliate products or generate adsense income.

For a step by step guide on using Wordpress go to http://umwblogs.org/wiki/index.php/A_step-by-step_guide_for_using_WordPress.

So you’ve got your affiliate website up and running…Great work! The next phase in getting your affiliate site moving is to bring visitors to your website. So how do you go about doing this? There are many steps you can take to promote your website. Some cost money other don’t. Here is a breakdown on marketing strategies to help build your website.

Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is the easiest way to bring customers to your website immediately. The downside to this is that you obviously pay for every click that is directed to your website. If there is no money in your budget for PPC advertising I suggest trying the free alternatives below until you are more comfortable with outlaying your hard earned cash.

If PPC advertising is something you would like to try out the best form of PPC advertising is via Google Adwords. Google Adwords allows you to choose how much you would like to pay for each click that is produced. The more you pay per click the higher you are shown on the right-hand side of Google results.

Word of Mouth

Ask anyone is marketing and they will say the best for of advertising of Word-of-Mouth. Why? It’s free promotion for your product or service and you don’t do any work to get it (well almost none). Word-of-Mouth usually comes in the form of recommendations by past customers to their friends, family or collegues.

So once you have your website up and running tell everyone you know!

Forums and Advice Websites

This is another form of free promotion which works quite well if executed properly online. If the industry that your affiliate work is involved with has online forums or help websites- get involved! By saying that I don’t mean go and SPAM your website address everywhere otherwise you’ll end up coming across the wrong way.

Offer others advice on your given industry and make a genuine effort to make a contribution to help others out. The best thing about online forums is that they allow you to have a signature at the bottom of each post you write- this is where you can add your website URL. If you are contributing regualrly and giving great advice, people will visit your website but best of all your post will likely be picked up by search engines and when others look for the same advice they will be directed back to your inital forum post.

With the pressures of work and long hours these days, people are looking to alternative forms of income to help them boost their lifestyle, extra cash for the weekend or to ultimately work from home. Affiliate Marketing appears to be a simple way for people to start out with this goal but inevitably most will be doomed to failure.

Affiliate Marketing requires patience, persistence and a lot (and I mean a lot) of hard work. When I first started out in affiliate marketing I was working a 40-hour a week job + around 40 hours per week on affiliate marketing. When starting out you ask yourself on many occasions if this is the right thing to be doing, but when that first commission cheque comes through ($80 in my case) i gives you the boost you need and the will to continue with your work.

So what is the best way to start out in Affiliate Marketing? There is no true answer to this, as your working and home-life will affect any outcome. But if you have a push in the right direction prior to starting it can save some heartache, frustration and more importantly CASH!

Choosing your website niche

The first step in creating an affiliate presence is choosing your niche. You’re going to be working with this project for a long time so I suggest choosing something that you are interested in so you keep motivated. Choosing a niche you think makes money although you have no interest in will ultimately get the better of you. As things slow and your motivation witters away so will your dedication to the project and you will most likely drop your plan.

Website Design

From a customers perspective, this is your first point of presence with the customer. Once they are on your site they will evaluate whether to continue with your website or not within the first second. If you homepage is not inviting or covered in advertising they will most likely hot the back button on their browser and go to a competitors website.

So where is the best place to start? If you are not technical (like myself) you can either learn how to design websites from scratch or as I did learn how to utilise web templates to form your web presence. There are many FREE web templates that you can use for your design including:

- www.freewebtemplates.com
- www.freewebsitetemplates.com
- www.steves-templates.com

Once you have decided on your website layout you will need a WYSIWYG (What you see if what you get) editor. There are a few free editors avaialbe on the web but if you can grab a copy of Dreamweaver it will make your life much easier!

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of getting a website to work better with search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN.

SEO will be your best form of marketing as it can be specifically targeted and best of all- brings visitors to your website for free.

There are 4 major steps to building your SEO campaign and this includes:

• Keywords
• URL and Page Title
• H1 tags
• Link Building

Choosing effective keywords

Choosing effective keywords for your SEO campaign is the first important step. When choosing keywords think of what you believe customers are typing into a search engine that specifies your website. For example don’t choose generic terms such as DVD if your website is a DVD store. These generic terms are highly competitive and is a tough ask to become highly rated.

Targeting a suitable market will depend on your website, as well as the products and services you offer. Try to be specific with your keywords, and remember that people no longer use single keyword search phrases - the average search phrase contains 3-5 related words.

To find out how competitive a keyword simply do a Google search and note how many results come up for the phrase. The more sites competing for the phrase, the harder it is it get a high ranking.

As a rough guide, try to optimise every page on your site for a different search phrase. Each search phrase should contain 2 to 3 highly targeted keywords.

URL and Page Title

The two most determining factors of how Google rates your website is by its URL (www.example.com) and your Page Title.

For example, if you were looking to build a DVD rentals website www.dvd-rentals.com.au would rank higher than www.companyname.com.au assuming they have similar content and minimal traffic. If having specific keywords in your URL looks out-of-place you can also append keyword URL’s to your site such as www.companyname.com.au/dvd-rentals.html

Your Page Title is just as important as your domain name. Using keywords in your title tag can improve your Google ranking significantly. Trying to achieve a balance of professionalism with keyword density in the title tag can sometimes a little more difficult.

Going back to our earlier example of a DVD website, a good title tag would be:

<title>”Get DVD Rentals Online at Company Name.”</title>

Usually, the closer to the front of your title tag the keywords are placed, the better.

H1 Tags

The Google ranking algorithm dictates that if you’re using a <h1> tag, then the text in between this tag must be more important than the content on the rest of the page. Here’s a quick example:

<h1>Google knows this text is more important</h1>
<p>… than this text</p>

Links

Having other relevant websites link to your site gives your site more juice. Think of links as a form popularity. The more people that like your website (and link) the more relevant your website will be categorised Google and other Search Engine.

Again going back to our earlier example with the DVD company we will create suitable links that we will incorporate our targeted keywords. An example of this might be:

<a href=http://www.yourwebsite.com.au>Rent DVD’s Online</a>

If you can get your link partners to add this snippet of code to their website it will add to your link popularity and at the same time boost your keyword focus.