Before I talk about my conversation with Jeremy Palmer, I want to address a GREAT point one of my readers, Walter, brought up. Here’s a comment he left on my last post:

“Interesting post, but a rather shallow analysis of how to succeed in such a climate. There are a lot more possibilities than just settling for razor-thin margins and becoming PPC day-traders:

1. In super-competitive markets like mortgages some affs are advertising in newspapers, which gets better ROI than paying Google;
   
2. Some affs may settle to break even or lose on the initial offer in favor of building a list and making it back on the back end;
   
3. I’ve seen some make the jump from PPC to SEO’d sites, though that will also get more competitive over time;
   
4. The content network is an underutilized resource, for those that understand how to get results from it;
   
5. There’s Authority sites and how to leverage Web 2.0 to get traffic without going near search engines or PPC.”

Excellent points, Walter! A key aspect of surviving in a high competition, high CPC environment is developing creative strategies to promote your affiliate offers. In fact I’m using several of the strategies that Walter lists above.

Here’s a few more strategies that are hot:

1. Develop a viral facebook application with an affiliate offer embedded in it, some affiliates are making a KILLING doing this. This is HOT right now.
2. Leverage web 2.0 traffic using the contextual network (even facebook offers contextual advertising now).
3. Supplementing your PPC efforts with SEO; this will help your profit margins AND your Google Quality Score. Although I don’t not recommend switching over completely to SEO, unless you REALLY know what you’re doing. Let’s face it ONE algo change can KILL your income overnight.
4. Using Google site targeting creative, ala Adwords180 (don’t worry Disappointed, it’s NOT an affiliate link )!

In regards to building a list, this strategy has been around for a while, the only downside is it only works well in certain markets, in particular info marketing (I RARELY use optins, and have tested them extensively) + Google has tightened the noose on squeeze pages.

Building authority sites that leverage Web 2.0 traffic, is brilliant strategy, and Zac Johnson is the master at this! However, this tactic has been around for a while and this space is also becoming extremely competitive-come on, how many college students do YOU know with myspace layout sites!?!

Not to say that you can’t make a killing if you know what you’re doing.

Bottom line: Yes, by being creative and innovative you can help you stay ahead of the curve and reap a profit. However, the fact is online media and advertising continue to become more and more competitive (and expensive) across the boards, so being creative/innovative alone won’t cut it.

So here’s my revised suggestions from the last post (thanks Walter!)…

Tips to succeed in Affiliate Marketing 2.0 (or 3.0 or whatever!)

1. Develop/learn creative strategies that take advantage of market imbalances and new trends, such as the strategies listed above. If you’ve learned the basics of affiliate marketing then you need stop thinking that doing what the majority of affiliates are doing is going to make you a fortune. Start thinking OUTSIDE OF THE BOX, and experimenting with different strategies.
2. Tweak, optimize, and expand your current profitable affiliate offers to assure long term profitability. Doing proper & thorough keyword research ALONE will significantly extend the lifetime of your campaigns. So start split testing your landing pages, split testing your Google ads, and expanding your keyword list. And if you think you’ve found all the keywords in your market that convert, YOUR WRONG!
3. If you think your one man affiliate show is going to cut it 10 years from how then you’re going to be in for a rude wakening. My suggestion is if you’ve gotten to the point where you are making consistent profits, start building a team now. It doesn’t have to be full time employees, find some good outsources you can work with on a regular basis. You can hire a great web designer in India or Eastern Europe for $10/hr. Elance is a great place to find writers that can crank out articles for you for $10 (or less) apiece.

Building a team will not only allow you to launch affiliate offers at a faster rate, but it will free up your time to develop/learn creative affiliate strategies.

And yes, no matter what, profit margins WILL drop overtime ON AVERAGE. But those affiliates who have the power of a team backing them up so they can: 1) free up their time to develop creative marketing strategies & 2) launch affiliate offers faster than their existing offers lose profitability (and thereby continue to grow their bottom line), are going to dominate the affiliate world.

Don’t be the affiliate who gets cocky and has to end up going to back to work for the Man!

Think long term.