Launching an Affiliate Offer: From Zero to Profitability, Part I
September 10th, 2007 by 
Amit
Going from zero to profitability can often be the most frustrating part of launching an affiliate offer.
Now I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of finding a good offer or testing an offer. I’m going to assume you’ve found a good offer that:
- Other affiliates are having success with, I always go with offers with proven track records
- That has substantial profit potential, if I can’t potentially make several $1000 a day profit with the offer, I don’t waste my time with it
The next step is to find a good list of keywords using tools such as Wordtracker, Google Keywords Tool, etc. There’s dozens of keyword tools on the market so take your pick!
And no, the secret is NOT in the keyword tool you’re using.
Make sure you do a thorough job with keyword research, read this post of mine to get some insights on how to do that.
Now Once you’ve done your keyword research, & setup your Adwords campaign (tightly targeted Adgroups with relevant adcopy) you have a decision to make:
Do you make a landing page for this offer or do you do Googlecash?
I would strongly recommend making a landing page. However, if you’re still testing the offer, the best way to do that is to buy a domain name and do a framed redirect to the affiliate site.
Google doesn’t allow this, but they won’t catch on for months. It’s just for testing, so no worries.
If you’re serious about the offer then construct a landing page. If you don’t know where to start regarding your landing page design, I would recommend doing a little market research by studying what other affiliates are doing, what elements are similar in their landing pages.
And then construct your own UNIQUE landing page.
I know some of you have a hard time with that part, but trust me, if you only rip people off you’re only cheating yourself-you won’t learn anything and you’ll ultimately limit your own success.
I would recommend using a good split test program to set up a split test url for your Google campaign right off the bad.
Also, make sure you have your affiliate manager install Google conversion tracking and your split test tracking code on the thank page, and if they refuse drop the offer and move on.
You always want to do an A/B split test on your landing page AND use crazyegg to determine how many people are clicking through to the affiliate offer, and what affiliate link they’re clicking on.
Test the colors, headline, graphics, anything you can think of.
TEST!
Once you’ve launched your offer you want to carefully monitor it. The first sign of a healthy launch is if you break even or are just slightly negative right off the bat. 
Then your job is to optimize your campaign
Now there are several other scenario you can hit:
- You’re getting barely any traffic, but the offer is converting! You need to bid on more keywords or increase your bids if your bid position is low.
- You’re getting lots of traffic, but no conversions. You’re either bidding on the wrong keywords, or have a poor traffic source (such as some smaller ppc search engines or the Google content network, etc)
- You’re getting lots of traffic, have conversion, but your ROI is low. Your either bidding too high, and if that’s not the case then there’s a problem with your landing page, I would revamp your landing page.
No matter what scenario your campaign ends up in the key to success is persistence.
Think about it, if other affiliates are succeeding with the offer, then it’s only matter of getting the right traffic to a landing page(s) that converts.
You have to have the mindset: I’m going to keep testing different landing pages, ads, keywords, and traffic sources until I get this offer profitable.
Once you’re at the point where you’re getting decent traffic and your landing page is converting, albeit you may still be breaking even or slightly negative, then you’re ready to go on to the next step, optimization, which I’ll discuss in the next post.
Posted in Super Affiliate Mindset, affiliate marketing | 
Hi!
I just wanted to say what an inspiration you are. I read tons of blogs and forums, but you’re the only one that really focuses on the power of the MIND and how it’s the most important factor of success. Keep it up!
-Charles Ngo
“Google doesn’t allow this, but they won’t catch on for months.”
Hey Amit,
How often do you break Google’s rules? Isn’t it
possible that Google will ban your account if you
break the rules too often?
Hi,
Thats a really good post, Have to agree the landing page is my hardest point, finding something that works then sort of testing it.
Great post, your site is helping me slowly.
Cheers
Kevin
UK
Hi John,
I follow Google’s rules as much as possible. I’ve used framed redirects in the past temporarily only to test an offer, and that’s all I recommend it for.
Sincerely,
Amit
Hey Amit,
Is there a good ruleset of Google slaps I can find here on your site?
Im in the middle of getting ready to launch some seasonal offers and I wanna make sure that my sites are up to par with Google. I know the rules a little bit, but not that much.
Wow, this is some really good stuff. I can’t wait for the next post. Please go into as much detail as you can.
Thanks for sharing,
John
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Excellent info that I can go with.
Hey Amit, I just want to say thanks for this blog. It really means a lot to a lot of people that you’re willing to lend your experience. Although some of your posts are kind of cheesy (hey at least I’m being honest!), you’re a cool dude, keep up the good work! Thanks for giving back!
Doesn’t frame redirect create errors on some check out pages? I once heard CafePress did not work correctly with frames.
Amit-Thank you.
I followed your advice and lowered my PPC bid price by 20 cents across the board.
Your advice gave me my first profitable campaign!
Quick Question:
Don’t redirect effects your Quality Score? causing very high minimum bid?
Thanks
“I’ve used framed redirects in the past temporarily only to test an offer”
are you doing anything special on that page as well, adding in some content (even though it wont come up on the page) for the adBot Spiders? I have multiple offers I would like to test this way before investing in having some pros design landing pages for each specific term.
however, ti seems whenever I do this almost immediately the impressions that are served up go way down, and i get dinged with landing page quality score issues.
What am I missing?
Hi Amit,
What kinda of affiliate programs do you recommends for beginners?
And How do you chose which affiliate programs is the profitable one?
And then construct your own UNIQUE landing page. -> HOW? do we need to create it from scratch?
I’m also confused about this, I have no idea where to create a landing page or even how to start.
Wow - Amit, you’re a legend. Thanks for all the advice etc, etc, etc
You certainly know your stuff!
And to all the posters above (well a majority of them): ‘Use your brains.. He’s given you the golddust, the what-you-need-to-do’s and yet you’re still hassling him asking him if he can help you some more.’
@Haz - Those are crazy questions. Aff. programs vary from what the user is promoting, there won’t be a ‘best’ program. Each different program will give different payouts.. I’m a newbie here, and it’s plain to see you just need to think about it…
@Cross - “construct your own UNIQUE landing page” literally means make your own page!
@Richard - If you want a page made on the internet, chances are you are going to have to either design/code it, or pay someone to do it. If you’re starting out, just look into basic HTML/CSS and fiddle around with it to help start yourself out with your aff. campaign.
Good post.
Just a word of advice, especially to the affiliate marketing newbies.
TRY TO STAY WITHIN GOOGLE’S TERMS OF SERVICE. This is so important.
You could get banned if you are caught cheating.
Also there are a lot of affiliate marketers who make a great living online and operate strictly within the TOS
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Great tips! Domain parking can only get you so far. I’ve been looking for a way to increase revenue from my domains.