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May Newsletter – Affiliate Millions

May 11, 2009 on 7:25 pm | In Newsletter Archives | No Comments

Hi Everybody,  So do you want the good news first, or the bad news?

The Bad News
 Let’s just go ahead and get the bad news out of the way.  As of May 1^st, Amazon.com no longer allows direct search marketing.  They were the last really big affiliate program to still allow affiliates to place their ads directly on search and content networks, and their decision to disallow direct search puts the exclamation point on the writing that was already on the wall…  Direct search marketing of affiliate programs is no longer the path of least resistance for reaching financial independence.  This doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a lot of money to be made in affiliate marketing, but it does mean we have to look at some different approaches.

The Good News
 The good news is, there is still a LOT of money to be made in affiliate marketing using other techniques.  The even better news is one of these techniques in particular is even easier, and cheaper than direct search was.  Let’s get right to our new options;

The Easy Money – Redirecting existing traffic to Casino Programs
 I’ve been searching for something as profitable and as easy as Direct Search was – before most companies stopped allowing it – and I’ve even resorted to doing a little hard work, buying domain names, setting up landing pages and advertising those.  And although I have had a little modest success there, I don’t appear to have the same knack for web design that I have for ad writing.  

HOWEVER… as I have shut down sites that weren’t profitable, I decided to redirect the traffic to online casinos, simply because it wouldn’t cost me any more money, and they were the only programs that would pay commissions on redirected traffic.  Most of these domains generated only few clicks a day, so I stopped even looking at them for several months.  Last month, I took a closer look and realized, although almost none of this traffic converted, the small number that did convert made multiple online gaming visits and blew an average of more than $4,000.00, and those figures are climbing.  With lifetime commissions of 36%, I suddenly realized that I might be able to make some real money with even less effort than my last gig.

I suggest you try what I am now doing, which is this…  buy cheap (under $100) existing domain names with at least a trickle of existing traffic (make these European domains like co.uk and .fr, etc. because US law now prevents these affiliate programs from paying you for US traffic), then simply redirect these domains to a casino affiliate program.  It may be months before you see your first commission, but as you add more and more domains, these commissions will come quicker and quicker.  All you care about is that the domains have some existing daily traffic, but if the domain happens to be gambling specific, that’ll obviously work a little better.

Your only cost is the purchase price of the domains (and you can always sell these sites later, so even that money is recoverable) and the hosting costs, though many sites will do the redirect for free.

Search for and buy the domains at a site like GoDaddy.com.  And sign up for the lifetime commission program at Casino Blasters.   Take your affiliate link codes you get from casino blasters, and tell GoDaddy to redirect your domains there.  Low cost.  Low risk.  Minimal effort.  That simple.  

Old School Affiliate Marketing – Using Landing pages
 Many affiliate marketers are switching back to the old model of using landing pages to market affiliate programs.  If you decide to go this route (and it certainly opens up many avenues for marketing many different products), we have many resources available to you at www.AffiliateMillions.com/web-design.html.  You can find affordable and professional web-design assistance and we even offer free website templates.  You can view a working example of one of our templates at www.Great-Colleges.com.One thing to keep in mind when you are promoting a website of your own is that your Google pagerank will directly impact the cost and placement of your ads, so be sure to focus some of your efforts on optimizing your site for search engines.  If you can successfully climb near to the top of a few key searches, you will begin getting the best kind of traffic…  FREE!  Add to that the relevancy of the traffic you get from appearing at or near the top of a few relevant search phrases, and you will likely have established a significant revenue stream.

A great book about promoting your own website that I read in preparation for launching the Affiliate Millions website is Insider Seo & Ppc: Get Your Website to the Top of the Search Engines, available now on Amazon.

That’s all for today.

Good Luck, Affiliate Millionaires in training!