What’s the Secret to Affiliate Success?…Part I
November 29th, 2007 by 
Amit
I often get this question : “Amit, I love your blog and all the info you give out, but honestly already what’s the secret to being a successful super affiliate?”
As I’ve said before there’s really is NO secret to becoming a super affiliate, however, there are two concepts, idea, or whatever you want to call them, that if you understand these 2 concepts, I mean REALLY understand them, then you’re either already a super affiliate or quickly on your way to becoming one.
So what are these two concepts you need to understand??
TESTING & SCALING
What exactly do I mean by testing and scaling?
Here’s what I mean by testing:
Assuming you understanding the basics of ppc affiliate marketing, and most of you do, whether you want to believe it or not.
You first goal is to test, test, test.
Test different affiliate offers, test different keywords for your affilaite offers, test different landing page copy, test different Google ad copy, most importantly test different strategies for successfully launching & growing a profitable affiliate offer.
Once you found a good affilaite offer and tested enough keywords, Google Ad copy, and landing page copy to produce a consistently profitable affiliate campaign (even if it’s only $25/day profit), your next goal is to SCALE your campaign.
What most affiliates do at this point is they jump up with joy at their $25/day campaign, and then go into a completely different niche with a completely different strategy.
THIS IS A BIG MISTAKE.
If you have been busting your butt optimizing an affiliate offer and got it to $25/profit you need to LEVERAGE everything you discovered while making that offer profitable. This is what I call scaling your affiliate business.
You want to do everything you can to MULTIPLY that $25/day into $300/day or even, in some cases, $3000/day.
I’ll get into a lot more detail about this is Part II of my post, but here’s a few ways to scale your profitable affiliate offer:
- Aggressively expand your keywords list, go wider and deeper.
- Promote other affilaite offers in the same or in a very similar niche. In this case you’re leveraging everything you learned in your niche, what type of keywords and copy work best, that is. You discover that with different products in that same or similar niche, the same type of copy and keywords work well.
- Expand your campaign onto other search engines, this is a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how many affiliates don’t take the time to do this. I run some of my top offers on up to 5 different search engines.
- If your strategy is unique, replicate the same strategy you used to make your affiliate offer profitable in other niches. For example if your bidding on misspelled domain names, and have found a really effective way of doing this that generates high ROI, then duplicate this in as many niches as you can.
An essential key to building SCALE is systemization.
Building scale without a system can be an insane amount of work.
What do I mean by systemization anyway?
What I mean by “system” is a nearly automated step by step process that allows you to dramatically speed up the process of scaling your business.
Here’s an example: I’ve had a lot of success scaling my affiliate offers by pumping up the amount of keywords I’m bidding on, in particular broad keywords. It’s not uncommon for me to add 20k, 30k, or even 50k of keywords to a campaign I’m scaling.
Now setting up targeted adgroups can be a nightmare for 50k keywords, and especially if it’s a BROAD keyword list (that is with lots of related and lateral keywords, and not just long tails combinations).
I have a whole system in place, including a team of people that I’ve trained to clean, sort, & group the keywords. Plus I’ve developed some bulk methods to setting up 100s, even 1000s of adgroups in a very short period of time.
This system has allowed me to take an affiliate campaign that’s maybe making $100/day profit and explode it to the point it’s making $1000+/day profit in a matter of weeks.
Do you have a system in place to scale YOUR affiliate business?
Stay tuned for Part II where I get into more of the nitty gritty of TESTING & SCALING!
Posted in Super Affiliate Mindset, affiliate marketing | 
Amit,
100% agree. Having worked for a large affiliate marketing company in the past, I’m about to jump back in on my own. But I think what gets many people is the gap between starting out and where you are. Look at your post… you’re talking about thousands of keywords and a team of people. That SOUNDS like a lot to do… and it is. But what people need to realize is that you don’t jump from $25/day to 10k keywords and a team of five people in a week. Or a month. You’re going to grow iteratively… that $25/day budget that makes $25 means you now have $50 per day. And if you can keep the same ROI, soon it’s $100/day and so on. As your income grows your need for more help will grow… but at that point you have the revenue for it.
Another thing that I think people might get intimidated by is the mention of thousands of keywords… “what if I only have $100 a day?” Well, two things there… first, a keyword that doesn’t get a click costs you nothing. Zero, Zip, Nada. And if it’s getting clicks… there’s possible revenue there. But here’s the important point - you can’t get clicks on a keyword that you’re not bidding on! So, build out that keyword list… see what gets clicks… optimize those… dump/bid down the losers, dive into the winner and see what it is about them… bid them up, find related words. A ton of work and not as simple to do as to write… but doable if you want.
Nice post…I look forward to reading your next one.
Hi Amit, as always it has been interesting to read this post. Will you be telling a bit more about the “bulk metods” you use to get so many adgroups up and running?
Richard
Scaling is one of the simplest things to do and yet most people just forget about it and start from scratch with a different niche.
The least you should do is duplicate your campaigns across MSN, Yahoo and Adwords. You’ve already found your converting keywords, now just send more traffic.
Interesting…I am going to test it!
BTW, do you do any SEO method to optimize your promoting site? I mean do you eventually drop PPC?(If you have 50K keywords, don’t think so??)
Can you also talk about some of your experience when you are starting? and How long it takes for you to expand your keyword list when you are just starting 1 person? How big the keyword list when you start?
Thanks again, love your articles…!
Amit,
I know this request cannot be answered, but I just try.
Can you share the tools you use to get to have success with affiliate marketing?
I remember reading about the Adwords editor and API, do you have other secret weapons?
Thanks
Francesco
Hi Amit,
Your systematic approach in building a keyword list is fantastic. After I watched the case study video (Super Affiliate Accelerator) that you did with Andrew, I can build thousands or even hundreds thousand keyword list in a very short time.
Thanks Amit, you really open my eyes
Herman
I saw the super affiliate accelerator is closed, too bad for me! Just in case there is a “version 2″, I would like to join!
Amit, do you or have you ever used the keyword grouper tool in Adwords editor at all? Is that fairly effective at grouping a large list of keywords into smaller tighter adgroups?
Hi Amit,
Question: when you “port” your campaigns over to other search engines (e.g., Google to Yahoo) — do you take all the keywords or just the ones that are performing well?
I used to only take my best performing keywords — but now I’m starting to realize that the results are not always the same across different search engines. Meaning that a keyword that performs well on Google may not necessarily do well on MSN and vice versa.
What’s your take?
Great Post Amit. I’ve been following your blog now for a few months now and you’ve really opened up my eyes to affiliate marketing. I appreciate your teachings without having to drop a few C notes for the knowledge. Keep them coming.
Craig
Great post looking forward to the next installment on scaling. i think this is where im lacking in knowlegde
I am 100% agree with you!
I just have to say 2 words:
EXCELENT POST