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On our free webinar this week I mentioned “thin affiliate sites” and we also discussed it a bit on the latest IMTW Podcast (episode #11).

This is an important topic for those of you in Affiliate Marketing, so I wanted to expand on it a bit and explain exactly what it means and why you should avoid it…

Thin Affiliate Sites are basically doorway pages, or web pages/sites created solely for the purpose of being the go-between from the visitor to the merchant with no real other value added to the visitor experience.

Perry Marshall calls them an illegitimate businesses, Allan Gardyne talks about why “thin affiliate sites” are offensive to Google, and Michelle MacPhearson recently put out a video about a Social Media Slap. I put out a series last Fall on the Social Media Marketing Warning myself as well.

They’re all worth a study, and they all go hand in hand for Affiliate Marketers.

Why?

Allan Gardyne explained it well in his article, discussing Google’s perspective on Thin Affiliate Sites:

Google says: “We differentiate between affiliates that produce extra service, value, or content, and those that simply are duplicates of other sites, set up to boost traffic to other sites and earn a commission for it. The former ones are not Offensive and should be rated on the merits to the query. The latter ones are Offensive…

“Thin affiliate doorways are sites that usher people to a number of Affiliate programs, earning a commission for doing so, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user. A site certainly has the right to try to earn income; we’re attempting to identify sites that do nothing but act as a commission-earning middleman.”

Google also says: “Do not call a page affiliate spam when an affiliation is only incidental to the message and purpose of a website. To determine whether participation in affiliate programs is central or incidental to the site’s existence, ask yourself this question: Would this site remain a coherent whole if the pages leading to the affiliate (merchant) were taken away?”

That probably counts out most affiliate sites. -source

These quotes were pulled from an internal document that Google uses to train human agents they hire to evaluate their search results for accuracy. You can read more about that document at the source.

The bottom line is that to be a successful affiliate, you have to add value to the sales process - and for your target market. You have to bring something to the table to add to the buying experience, whether that be helping in the decision making process, product reviews, tips on how to use the product, unique applications of the product, etc.

Otherwise you’re just throwing out affiliate links, or creating what is called “thin affiliate sites”. If there’s no added value, what reason would someone come through your link instead of just going straight to the source themselves?

And if there’s no added value for human visitors, what reason would Google have to rank your affiliate pages well?

Look at ways that you can add value to the process. Make sure your affiliate sites, or even affiliate pages on your site, could stand on their own content-wise even without the affiliate links.

Best,

I use Adwords to promote affiliate programs. It’s not all I use though. By using SEO first, I get an idea of what will work for advertising and then I attack. Because rank via SEO is harder to keep than rank that I paid for. But rank via SEO is cheaper and gives you an idea of what keywords are valuable to you.

But when you use advertising, you have time and you have credit limits. And your credit limit is your bankroll, stealing a term from poker which I used to be interested in but found the process too slow for making real money and keeping me interested.

But you also have time. And although you can almost consistently make money through researched PPC campaigns, it is not printing money.

Adwords charges your account once you have used $500 worth of clicks. If the card you are using to pay for ads has a credit limit of $2000, you can be charged 4 times before you have to pay it off. But in order to pay that off, you need your profits. And when you get your profits is determined by how soon your affiliate program pays you for your current work.

So here is a basic formula: The Amount Of Money You Can Make Via Ads = Your ROI Threshold * Credit Limit / Affiliate Program Payment Schedule.

Where “Your ROI Threshold” is the minimum amount of return on investment you will settle for. In other words, where you either shut off a campaign or modify it until it’s ROI is back where you want it.

Let’s say your ROI Threshold is 100%. In other words, you want to make a buck for every buck you put in. Let’s say your credit limit is $2000 and your affiliate company pays you a month after you make a sale. And now, let’s put those numbers in the formula:

1*$2000/Month = $2000/Month

For Clickbank, the turn around is two weeks. So make it $4000.

And there are only a few ways to change this number:

• Get more credit. Works for some. May not work for others.
• Settle only for a higher ROI. Drop campaigns that don’t product well for those that do better. Add negative keywords when needed. Use more phrase matched and exact matched terms rather than broad ones.
• Find an affiliate program that pays more quickly. With some, it’s two months before you can reap the profit. That would drop the number above to $1000.

And once you get to a profit you can spend, don’t spend it. This may be the hardest part. Put enough in the bank so you don’t have to rely on credit. This will be your true bankroll. The advantage to this is that the amount you make back is now limited by your bankroll + your credit.

Of course, if you have unlimited credit, this does not apply. Don’t worry about the bankroll.

And there can be some advantages to consistently running up and paying off a card that has miles or some sort of rewards. Free things are always good and it can also feel good to get money back from the credit card companies for a change.

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• Pay per click advertising

CPA is cost per action. If that action is buying a product, then we have to get our potential customers to open their pocketbook. In today’s economic times, this is getting harder and harder. And the competition is fighting for the same customers you are.

When CPA is used, sometimes it is referring to pay per lead programs. No taking out the credit card. Not even getting a free trial that is billed monthly in 30 days, although some can be. Just get the lead and get paid.

When you sign up for a CPA program, you are signing up for half the job you do as an affiliate marketer. You don’t have to close the sale. You only have to lead customers to the people that will. And you get paid for that lead. I’d say that’s a deal.

Some combinations of info your visitors may have to fill out for you to get credited with a lead:

• Just an email address.
• Name and address and phone #
• Name, address, phone # and email
• All info plus a credit card

And on the whole, the more info requested, the more you get paid. You could be looking at $30 or more to get someone’s credit card for a 30 day free trial of Acai Berry

But, of course, where the money is easier, it’s not really easier. There is competition. There is a lot of competition for easy money. But it is possible to make money this way. I have used both Adwords advertising and banners on my own sites to generate paid leads and it has worked. And since you are dealing with $1, $5 and $10 increments, you can track your results quickly. You will know if a campaign is working early. Whereas you might let a product with a $75 commission ride a bit before you cut it and have the potential of losing a lot more money if you are not used to using PPC.

Some Pay Per Lead Affiliate Programs

• Maxbounty
• ShareASale
• FineClicks
• ClixGalore
• LeadPile

You can find a lot more just by searching Google for “pay per lead” programs. But these have been around for a while and I have made money from the programs listed above.

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• Don’t Wait! Understand Affiliate Marketing
• The Arbitrage Conspiracy: best thing since sliced bread?
• CPA Watchdog?
• What ad network should I use to monetize my blog?

I am going to let you in on something. There are a few ways you can pick a topic for a niche blog.

One is to go through your interests and what you want to learn and pick something. Then find some affiliate products that compliment that interest. Then start writing. If you are interested, than it should be easy to come up with content. This is probably the best way. Readers will notice your passion and your stake in what you have to say. You can’t go wrong with this route.

Another way is to play affiliate programs like they are the stock market. And I will have to admit, I have done this one too. Commission Junction, Clickbank and various other affiliate programs give you stats on where the most money is to be made and which products are the most popular.

With Clickbank, you can use sales rank, gravity and referred. Of course other factors may influence your choice such as whether the product has a subscription (subscriptions rule) or the actual commission you get on the product (not wasting your time promoting a product).

Sales rank on Clickbank is a aggregate number. It is calculate based on the other sales numbers as Clickbank. It’s as mysterious to Clickbank affiliates as PageRank is to SEO’s. They don’t know the exact algorithm, but they can guess. And for the most part, what you need to look for in the sales rank is the movement. Did a product just jump from #50 to #30 in a couple of days? Did a product come out of nowhere and hit the top 5 in it’s category? Or did it’s popularity go down? What caused this: hype or organic growth?

Gravity indicates how many affiliates are actively promoting the product. The number does not tell you exactly how many affiliates are promoting the product. It also is a calculated number giving present sales more weight than past sales. But it does give you and indication of the competition. And when you line it up against rank, you begin to notice discrepancies. If you sort Clickbank products by the rank and notice that the gravity dips for a product or two, those may be products you want to check out. That means the sales are in line with the rank, but there happens to be a few less affiliates promoting that product.

Referred gives you an exact number. This is the percentage of sales that come from affiliates. Most are high in Clickbank, in the 90% range. If you find a higher ranking product where the referred number is low, like 60% that means that the bulk of the sales resulting in that high rank is coming directly from a vendor. And this might indicate to you that you can take a little bit of that pie. Another tip. When this happens, it can also indicate pretty good branding on the vendor’s part (i.e. the product has a distinctive name and the vendor is most likely ranking #1 for that name).

Sometimes tools help with this process. There are a few tools that will help:

• CBengine
• CBTrends
• Clickbank Advantage
• CB Analytics
• CB Affiliate Revenue
• Clickbank Elite