100% Organic Search

Despite hundreds of dollars spent on organic search rankings and things of that nature, one thing is becoming quite clear about methodized organic affiliate marketing (or MOAM): it ain't easy.

That is, at least not for me.

From what I can tell, if you want to rank for short-tail keywords organically, you're going to have to spend about the same as you would for the search terms (surprise, surprise). There are exceptions to the rule, of course. For instance- popular service-based websites (like plentyoffish.com) that already have a huge and growing user-base are going to have little trouble making thousands per day in affiliate conversions.

But you already knew that and so did I.

What the experiment has done a great job of is confirming that you need to spend a good deal of money to make money with affiliate marketing, unless you're clever. That's because clever people can do any of several things with less traffic:

1. Create a highly-relevant website that naturally makes people convert
2. Use incentivized offers to generate leads
3. Disguise affiliate links as real links/images within the site (Greyhat)
4. Generate tons of back-links to interesting things (link-baiting) to put their site in the spotlight
5. Do traditional marketing with affiliate offers (putting up signs on the street, overpasses, etc. & sending out mailings)

Sadly, I have yet to be successful at any of the above but I'm a pretty stubborn determined person. However, the clarity that has come with this small realization has helped me narrow my focus and my funds on two of the above methods in order to continue with this experiment: #1 and #4.

If you can create a highly-relevant website (like a dating site, a niche news site or a health information site) where good, unique content gets created daily, and then you can use link-baiting techniques to get people to promote that site, suddenly you've got a cash-generating machine. Of course, this is speculative based on conversations I've had with people who own niche sites that just get organic traffic. The only problem is that conversion rates are typically much lower than with PPC, depending on how well offers are foiled.

To make a long story short, that's where I am now -- having things created that match the above description in hopes that I can cash in on the work of others. I'll keep you posted.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under Organic Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.