At the recent Elite Retreat Conference in San Francisco I had the opportunity to listen and learn from some of the top search and affiliate marketing experts in the world (both speakers and attendees). After the conference I was thinking about one of the differentiating characteristics between an average affiliate marketer and a super affiliate. For the purposes of this post I consider any affiliate who makes over $10,000 profit per month a super affiliate. However, from my experience top super affiliates can make over $100,000 per month profit and several make in excess $1,000,000 per month.
Several affiliate marketing blogs exist including this one that provide real world money making tips. However, what we tend to talk about are ways that we have made the money (in effect, we let the cat out of the bag) – by the time you go ahead and reproduce those ideas the market becomes saturated. Therefore, while money can be made quite easily by following our recipes the truth is that true super affiliates make lots of money because they are able to think outside the box, not just reproduce the same ideas over and over.
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX – EXAMPLE #1
For instance, at the Elite Retreat I talked about how I created a paid search campaign for UGG Australia Boots in November 2006 – I noticed in previous years that UGG Boots sell like hot cakes in the winter and there always seems to be a supply demand issue whenever I walk through a department store; however, I figured online there are multiple vendors who sell UGG Boots and have affiliate marketing programs (i.e., Zappos, Shoes.com, UGG Australia.) Using competitive research software called KeyCompete I was able to download a list of about 190 keywords and create a campaign on Google that I set LIVE within about 15 minutes of the original idea – that one campaign netted about $30K per month in commission (about $15K profit) since November – not bad for 15 minutes of work.
Why did I choose UGG Australia?
Easy. I am a big believer that playing seasonality, holidays, and reality TV provides huge opportunities for affiliate marketers. For instance, you should be thinking about how you can promote affiliate offers for summer (i.e., Life is Good t-shirts), Easter (organic honey hams), and American Idol (top 24 contestants). The idea is to think outside the box – unlike the average affiliate marketer who is more interested in doing what everyone else is doing. If you are able to start bidding on keywords like “Lakisha Jones” before she is deemed by Simon the front runner on American Idol or if you are able to get in on the ground floor of an innovative idea you can make serious money.
By the way, my UGG Australia idea has probably been remanufactured a couple of dozen times, which is OK by me – GO FOR IT! However, that’s not the point – the point is to think of shit like that (before I do!) as a strategy for building your affiliate marketing business.
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX – EXAMPLE #2
Here’s another example of thinking outside the box by someone who has defined himself as an industry leading affiliate by setting the standard and doing things differently.
Jeremy Palmer is a well-known entrepreneur within the affiliate marketing community – he has a popular blog called QuitYourDayJob.com and an e-book where he discloses how he made over $1,000,000 in commission in 1-year – it’s my understanding that in the early days of his career Jeremy made most of his income through affiliate marketing search arbitrage (PPC & SEO). However, since the early days Jeremy has steadily re-defined his approach to make what I would guess is a few more million in affiliate commissions and e-book sales.
Most recently I stumbled upon one of Jeremy’s newest money making methods that is clearly outside the box and in my opinion is brilliant.
Jeremy recently launched an affiliate marketing campaign to promote MSN Adcenter – he titles the name of the project “Discover Powerful Microsoft® AdCenter Secrets that Will Help You Explode Your Online Income.” His campaign pitch is located HERE.
Jeremy very creatively (and professionally) presents his visitors with the ability to learn more about MSN AdCenter through an educational video he himself produced, while also providing his visitors with the ability to save money by signing up as a new MSN AdCenter advertiser.
Note that Jeremy has at least two clear goals for his AdCenter campaign. However, both goals have the same outcome, which = make more money!
First, Jeremy wants to get his user to sign-up for a video tutorial that shows them “how to significantly increase their search advertising ROI and master Microsoft AdCenter.” Second, and most importantly, Jeremy includes an affiliate link on the page for his visitors to get a $50 CREDIT for opening a new account on Microsoft AdCenter.
Note that in order to get the video you have to supply Jeremy with your contact information (name / e-mail). Once you sign-up he immediately sends you an e-mail that includes a link to the video, another [affiliate] link to the MSN AdCenter $50 Coupon, and a link to his website where he sells his e-book.
Now this is what I call outside the box affiliate marketing.
Clearly, MSN AdCenter has agreed to pay Jeremy a nice commission for every visitor to his website that he can convert into an AdCenter advertiser. To make this happen Jeremy has gone to great lengths…including producing his own educational video, creating a professional “newsletter,” and capturing the user’s contact information so he can re-market to them in the future. For instance, he may promote his e-book or just simply use the contact info to continue promoting the original MSN Adcenter coupon…or any future videos he may put out (if he hasn’t already), including a Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing educational video, along with a masterfully embedded series of affiliate links.
Do I think Jeremy is making money off this idea – absolutely!
Do I think you can do the same? Of course, but that’s not the point of this post.
The purpose of this post is to encourage you to think ouside the box so that you can become a super affiliate or conversely, if you are already a super affiliate ($10K+ per month) I want to to think outside the box about how you can make even more money.
Trust me, I personally have friends who are generating millions in profit per month through affiliate marketing – as long as that’s the case I will continue to think outside the box so that I can (or teach others) to make more than they do.
Meet The Pepperjam Team – Video #11 – Senior Affiliate Manager, Tara DeGiusto
