how NOT to do affiliate marketing

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Good god NO.

You're my hero Mike. As soon as I read that meta tag dump I scrolled down to reply. Luckily I saw your reply first.

The ONLY other meta tag I'd consider would be the NOODP tag. But this would only before my sites that are in DMOZ.

Code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>

For those who don't know, the NOODP tag is now recognized by Google and Yahoo as a way to tell the bots to stop humping your dmoz.org listing so hard and come up with a unique description of their own for the SERPs. The default setting is for the bot to display the dmoz description for a site since it is supposedly reliable and human edited data (yeah right).
 


Thanks for the input, Chris. I don't have the main page monetized because I have no PPC traffic headed there. All my more "general" keywords point to the comparison page. But I guess if they click "home" then you're right. I'll stick an adsense up there tomorrow.

On your suggestion to add pictures to each page... point taken. I'll work on that tomorrow and see how it looks!

Headed to bed... night WF.
 
I'm looking at your site and wondering about the following:
What's your target audience?

If I'm 200lbs overweight, i dont think the teeth whitening and clear skin will appeals to me much.

The teeth whitening and clear skin might go together though.

Also, based on a single info page, I'm not sure I'd convert into a transaction.

Maybe more graphics plus 3-5 pages of scraped content might help with conversions.

Maybe scrape some extreme makeover content then funnel to the weightloss?
 
So you think each actual PAGE should have a ton of information? I figured the reader would just get bored and keep surfing as opposed to a "tell them what they want to hear" and push them through the funnel type of process.

The site itself is targeting anyone who wants to improve their lives... I was going to add more categories such as career/education, stop smoking, and really anything the few affiliate networks I use have to offer.

Really just wanted to set up a bunch of offers that were somewhat cohesive and push PPC to them and see if I could convert.

So you think more authoritative content and lots more of it on each page?
 
Not knowing how you're positioning your PPC. I'm making a judgement from what I see on your page.

I may be shooting in the dark, though I'm looking at it from a usability point of view.

"Self improvement" or betterment generally has 2 categories:
1) people who are already doing ok, but want to do better (make more money, do time management, be a better parent, do dog training for their pets, etc).

I think you want to address the second category:
2) people who are in a kinda shithole because they got major problems. they're 200lbs overweight. their teeth are brown and yellow either from coffee, smoking, alcohol or other substances. or their skin is screwed up.

so it sounds like unless your traffic is specific to the 'solutions' (your CPA offers), your conversions might not be as high as you'd like them to be.

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My personal philosophy has been to create portals that target a specific prospect and upsell them multiple offers. so it might be women with kids who might be good for weight loss, stretch mark, quit smoking type offers.

stuff like ebay auctions, ringtones might not be appropriate for them.

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if you have a standlone 3-5 page site focused on a single product (eg weightloss) i think it'd be more effective than 5 pages on 5 different products.

the 5 pages on a single product give you more room to establish yourself as credible and prospects are more motivated to take up the offer.

a single info page leading to a sale, strikes me more as a 'hit and run' type of page.

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if you still have the leeway, maybe you'd want to do 5 pages just focused on one product and do PPC specific to that one product. IMO self improvement/betterment is kinda vague. you can use the domain, just narrow your PPC to push one type of product.

A keyphrase combination comprising 4-5 "buying keywords" might up your conversion.

Having said all this, I'd want to qualify that I'm looking at this from a content analysis standpoint, and don't do a lot of PPC yet. but I'd think the user experience going into the site might be similar to what I've pointed out.

But having seen your landing page, i'd intuitively think it'd be hard to close conversions from the outset.

So you think each actual PAGE should have a ton of information? I figured the reader would just get bored and keep surfing as opposed to a "tell them what they want to hear" and push them through the funnel type of process.

The site itself is targeting anyone who wants to improve their lives... I was going to add more categories such as career/education, stop smoking, and really anything the few affiliate networks I use have to offer.

Really just wanted to set up a bunch of offers that were somewhat cohesive and push PPC to them and see if I could convert.

So you think more authoritative content and lots more of it on each page?
 
In any case, I sped through making the site just to get it up and it is truly a piece of shit. I know I wouldn't buy anything through this page. That's probably most of my problem. The content probably sucks, too. As I said, I sped through it.

Soooo... I'll probably run my tab up to about $100 before calling it quits, and I'll gladly make changes you all recommend. But if your recommendation is "quit and start over", which it very likely could be, I suppose this thread won't go very far!
Like anything else, without the foundation your structure will collapse, unless your doing arbitrage and just looking for clicks, you shouldnt be speeding through anything. Your making sales not pushing for clicks and if you can sit back and honestly say "I wouldnt buy anything from this site" chances are no one else would either.

Why waste more money on something you know isnt going to convert?

I would get #1 design and layout and #2 the content re worked before dropping another dime. Losing money breaking yourself in is expected, im no super affiliate and loose money now and then over stupid shit its just part of the process, but why piss it away on something you know is shit from the get go, something you know isnt going to sell, save your money for honest fuck ups.....

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="keywords" content="web hosting, provider, php hosting, web hosting, free domain names, multiple hosting, multiple domain hosting, domain name, front page hosting, web site, web design, domain name registration, business web site, web site hosting, web space, picture hosting, small business, cheap web hosting, webmaster, web site builder, web space, affordable web hosting, marketing, cgi perl php hosting, blog, blogs, blogger, weblog, web log, weblogs, internet marketing, internet advertising, Richmond, Richmond Hosting, Shared Richmond, Web Hosting Richmond, richmond, host richmond, web space richmond" />
<meta name="description" content="FREE Domain Name. Affordable Web Hosting, 24x7 support. Get hosting for less!" />
<meta name="author" content="HostICan" /><meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
<meta name="copyright" content="HostICan" />
<meta name="revisit-after" content="3 Days" />
<meta name="clientbase" content="Global" />
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Id have to disagree with all the meta stuff, if your looking for long term organic results, I would only concern myself with meta description, the rest are just a waste of time and space. I was not to long ago convinced that the meta keywords tag still carried some weight, but now believe otherwise.

In the time it would take you to include all those meta tags, you could have done something else with the site that would carry some real weight.

I can only speak for myself but for me being still very new to the game I spend allot of time on each straight affiliate site (design, research and content) I dont build my affiliate pages to push PPC traffic to, Im building for long term organic results, but either way I think its very important to take the extra effort to make it look good and to make it read better.

Jer
 
That's some great insight Andrew, thanks... I think I've got some ideas on implementing but it pretty much means a complete content overhaul. Hopefully I'll get that done this weekend. Until then, feel free to keep the comments, opinions, recommendations coming!
 
I think we all learned from your learning experience.

I'd hold off on your PPC, rejig the site then go from there.

If it's intended to be long term/long tail, it doesnt hurt to refine it a little. do a $10 testing campaign, split test if needed then go from there. adjust. trickle another $10, then test, test, test.

Once you got the stuff fairly down pat, let it rip with the PPC.

I had a contact who didnt set a budget on his PPC and it ran through $800 in 2 weeks and he made $50 of sales.

Stuff like Corey Rudl's CarSecrets.com and Brad Fallon's BabyShowerSecrets.com are still going strong years after they've been launched.

Yes, they are pushing ebooks, but you can take the positive parts of their copywriting and adapt it for your needs.

Corey's site is pretty much the way it was, since he passed in a racing accident a couple of years back.
 
I'm a fan of no cache meta's when I'm cloaking. That combined with IP cloaking makes for a pretty undetectable cloak.
 
There's nothing wrong with the pics in the header but that yellow text with back stroke is really ugly! And so is the black/blue borders around it!

Also you sell weight loss products. Check out moreniche in my sig, they have a new weight loss product called proactol, (don't sign up under me if you dont want to).
They have 20 templates for proactol, and some of them could really work for your site! And you could just take them without even promoting their products.
 
I agree with Andrew and the others on the layout suggestions. One thing is you haven't mentioned how many adgroups and keywords you started out within your adwords campaign. Also, what is your average CPC? You can have the best designed landing page but the wrong set of keywords will never make a conversion.

Each adgroup should be highly targeted and point directly to the product you are promoting. You don't want to just throw a bunch of keywords into 1 adgroup......ex. don't put in diet pills, weight loss, diet plans in the same adgroup. Way to general. It will just hurt your quality score and make you pay more per click and put you further down in the ad position. I'd just start off with 5-10 highly targeted keywords per ad group. Each of these ad groups should contain the keywords you are using in your display ad.
 
You might improve a lot on the presentation side of the content.

One thing I learned from my neighbour (who does a lot of ebay sellign) is that product images improve sales.
We are talking 50+ percent sales price improvement here.

So when you are endorsing hydroderm, put up some images in the content (aligned left or right or both) that show the product packaging, pills, etc..

Your affiliate partner might have some creative for that purpose. Ask if they don't provide it straight for download.

Here is something like what I am talking about:

Hoodia Diet Review
(Not mine, just asked the mighty G)

Before/after pics might also help, especially in the "teeth whitening" and skin care stuff. There IS a reason they are still using fake/real/who cares "before and after" pictures in print media when advertising for diets, etc..

::emp::
 
Yes EMP I agree, when someone mentioned adding pics I was definitely thinking before/after would be a great idea.

I'm going to add pictures to each page, tweak the design and how to works with the content, provide better content and... I want to add a background to the link section but as I said before, it doesn't seem to appear when I use the proper syntax!

Let me know, I'll get working on this, and hopefully will have results to you on Saturday.
 
Good man, I will probably not be able to answer you on the weekend.
(Going to visit my parental units on Sat and Sun)

I'll take a look next week, tho.

::emp::
 
Eureka I dont think you will have much success with this and you will continue to lose more money. You need to target niches which are less competitive or have a higher ROI or get cheaper traffic. I dont see this as a possibility with Adwords.

yea it sucks
 
You're saying it's wrong to pick:
weight loss
acne
teeth whitening?

Are you high?
Seriously, you need a reality check.
You're giving screwed up "advice".

Eureka I dont think you will have much success with this and you will continue to lose more money. You need to target niches which are less competitive or have a higher ROI or get cheaper traffic. I dont see this as a possibility with Adwords.

yea it sucks
 
Those niches are waaay overdone and very competitive. If you want to argue with seamingly obvious facts go ahead.
 
It's only "overdone" if you can't get targeted traffic to your site for a reasonable CPC because there is too much competition. I haven't had a problem with this. These are HUGE markets and there is plenty to go around at the moment, IMHO. And, the payouts are large so a single $60 conversion will cover a lot of $$$ spent on traffic.

Dissenters I would love to hear a counter argument... until then I'm not about to start pushing underwater basket weaving supply kits.
 
It's only "overdone" if you can't get targeted traffic to your site for a reasonable CPC because there is too much competition. I haven't had a problem with this. These are HUGE markets and there is plenty to go around at the moment, IMHO. And, the payouts are large so a single $60 conversion will cover a lot of $$$ spent on traffic.

Then the money should just about be rolling in just now shoudn't it? Or are you just making more noobish assumptions...
 
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