Apologies for the lack of updates recently, however, we are now back in the driving seat and on track to deliver some more answers to those burning questions and headaches you’ve been having.  To softly kick those booze drained brain cells back into gear for the New Year, Brenda wrote in having completed an online course and setting up her first blog.  Unbeknownst to Brenda, she found herself doing something that started to trigger emails from an Affiliate Network about “Brand Bidding”:

“I’m a newbie to affiliate marketing, but I’ve done a 6-hour course on the net (hopefully legit) and I did a first blog.  Not good, but I thought I’d just put the theory into practice a bit early on in the course.

It was for a car insurance company.  I did put the name of the car insurance company and the group name in the text of the blog.  Also, I put in a banner for them.

I’ve now had an email from the company I’m being paid by saying that there will be a zero tolerance policy for anyone caught brand bidding.  What does this mean?  Also, they say members of their programme are not permitted to bid on (name of co.), insurance brand keywords, phrases or brand mispellings.

It then said please ‘negatively’ match on (name of company) and all variations.  Also, it said using their display URL is banned.

I don’t know what all this means in relation to a blog.

Please help.”

Here’s what the docs had to say …

Kier

Hi Brenda

‘Brand bidding’ is a bit of affiliate jargon and it refers to when an affiliate purchases clicks from a search engine like Google for keywords based around the site/company’s name.  The reason that this is frowned upon is that a lot of users perform searches on Google as a ‘navigational search’, that is to say rather than bookmarking or remembering the URL they simply type it into Google and click the first result.  As such users which have already been successfully marketed to by other mediums (newsletters, display, offline etc.) can then be cookied by an affiliate’s paid ad and they then get a commission for doing very little.

This can add considerably to a merchant’s bottom line costs and also tends to negatively affect the performance of other affiliates on their program, and so it’s banned on a lot of programs.  Some merchants also ask affiliates to add a ‘negative match’ for their brand keywords to their paid search campaigns.  This simply means that you can list the merchant’s brand term in your account and no queries with it in will have your ads shown.  This is done as there are various matching types for keywords in paid search, some show up just for a very specific query, but some will be broader and so can show up on keywords that you haven’t explicitly bidded on and thus could contain the merchant’s brand term.

If you are only using a blog for natural traffic and not buying paid traffic (which seems to be the case from your question) then you have nothing to worry about!  If in doubt speak to the network and they can help you out.

Mark

Hi Brenda.

Thanks for submitting your enquiry to the Doctors, and I hope the following will help you understand what the communication you have received from the merchant means.

Firstly I will explain what the merchant means from the email you have got:

This email means that they don’t want people to place Pay Per Click (PPC) ads on the name of their company on any of the search engines through paid search.  When they said any variations of the brand name, they mean you can’t bid on any terms that relate to their company name.

As an example, I will use the car insurance company Norwich Union or Aviva as it is now known:

You can’t bid on any terms that include the name Norwich Union or Aviva in any way, so if you were to bid on these terms your sales would be rejected.  So you couldn’t also bid on terms like “Norwich Union Car Insurance” as this would still be a variation, or “Norich Union” as this would be classed as a miss spell.

‘Negatively’ match on (name of company)

This means that you would have to add the name of that company as a negative match on any PPC activity.  So if you were bidding on car insurance, you would need to negative match the name of the company, so for the example you would need to add both “Norwich union” and “Aviva” as negative matches.

Using their display URL is banned

This means that if you are doing a PPC campaign you must not use the merchant URL on any PPC adverts you place in search engines, so you would have to use your own URL and landing page to direct your traffic to, and then the customer would come to your site and then go onto the merchant site.  So again, using “Norwich Union” and “Aviva” as an example, you would not be able to use http://www.aviva.co.uk/ as your display URL on your PPC ad.

From reading your question, I don’t think to be honest that any of the above affects you as you are talking about your own blog on which you are simply advertising the merchant and are not directing traffic via PPC to the company in question, so these terms don’t relate to you as you are not using PPC to generate traffic to your site.

I hope this is useful, if you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

Shane

Brand bidding is a term used in regard to pay per click (PPC) marketing such as Google adwords, Yahoo or MSN paid search.  It has nothing to do with organic search listings, so unless you are buying traffic from any search engines you have nothing to worry about.

If you do start paying for traffic, all it means is that you cannot bid for your adverts to appear on the terms the merchant says they don’t want you to or they will not pay you commission earned and may kick you off their program entirely.

“WordPress seems to be the hot thing for non-techies to get a site up and running with ongoing content management.  However, for projects that only have a few products, WordPress doesn’t always seem the most appropriate platform.

For example, for a site with limited products (~10) that are unlikely to change or have that much more added, the post format of WordPress and the concept of continually updating it with new information/products doesn’t sound like the best solution.

Can you recommend any other simple to use platforms that would help a non-techie to put up a site with the same ease as WordPress?  If not, is the only option to outsource the development?

Many thanks.”

Here’s what the docs had to say:

Kieron

I’ve been saying for years now, WordPress is THE only cms system you will ever need.  As I see it, your problem is that you want to build a site with limited products, less than 10.  I’m struggling to see what the problem is because no matter what cms/site building software you use, you will only ever have less than 10 products so always only a “thin” site.

My advice is to use WordPress, you will be very surprised at just how customizable it is, it can do pretty much anything in terms of layout and structure.  Then simply add fresh unique content to supplement your few products.  This will give the search engines more opportunities to latch onto content and send visitors your way.  Trust me, WordPress is every affiliate’s friend.

Kier

Hi Steve.

There are loads of products out there to help you get a site up, Joomla is a popular alternative to WordPress.  As you’re looking at building a basic product review site with around ten items, my advice is to head over to a tutorials site such as http://www.webmonkey.com and just give it a go.

Basic HTML really isn’t hard at all and anyone can get the hang of it without any other ‘technical’ training.  An hour or so with notepad and you should be able to get something passable made that you can get online and then improve as you go.  For something like this it’s not really worth outsourcing.

Lammo

Hi Steve.

This probably isn’t the answer you’re looking for, but I don’t see what’s wrong with WordPress – you can do as little (whack up ten pages and leave it) or as much (open up the bonnet and get customising) as you’re comfortable with.

As a non-techie myself, I love WP.  Of course I break things every now and then and it drives me mad, but I can create pretty much any type of site I want, quicker and easier than outsourcing it to anyone.  Ignore the fact that it’s blogging software and think of it as an SEO-Friendly CMS system that can be hacked away at if you want to.

Apologies if you really, really don’t want to use WP, but as far as I’m concerned, it really is the mutts nuts!

Editor

Hope that helps you out Steve.  Put simply, give WordPress a go, you can find 1000’s of templates to use, both free and premium dependent on what you’re after.  This site uses WordPress and was a custom design which is more expensive, but there are plenty of ready made solutions out there.  If you do pick a free theme, make sure it isn’t hiding any dubious links in places like the footer – see Kirsty’s post on removing encrypted footer links from WordPress.

What CMS platforms are you using for your affiliate sites?

Paul asks:

“Hi.

I have some domains that I would like to develop as small niches sites, but some of the merchants that I wish to promote are not offering their products through affiliate programmes.  I suspect that this is due to either a lack of awareness of AM, or they simply don’t consider AM as a viable channel.

Either way, what would you recommend when it comes to contacting a merchant to see if they would consider offering their products through affiliate marketing?  I’m aware that you did this with Secret Sales Kieron.  How easy is it for a small merchant to set up and where do you point them to find out the right information?

Many thanks.

Paul.”

Here’s what Kieron, Mark and Lammo had to say:

Kieron

Don’t let the fact that merchants you want to promote don’t have affiliate programmes yet.  Still promote them on your site, and when you’ve built up traffic and sent them a decent amount of visitors/sales then simply email/call them and ask for an advertising deal of some sort.  It doesn’t have to be a CPA based model, you can simply ask for a flat monthly fee to continue to send them traffic.  Sometimes this is preferable for smaller merchants who may lack the funds or technology to set up and integrate an affiliate programme into their site.  Once you have proved yourself by sending them traffic they will almost always pay to continue to have a presence on your site.

If you do want to steer the merchant down the AM route, then simply call them up or drop them an email saying that you know of similar merchants who have increased their sales by launching an affiliate programme, and best of all it’s on a pay-for-performance basis.  For small merchants, I would recommend one of the smaller networks that have low barriers to entry and no ridiculous monthly “management” fees.

Mark

Hi Paul

It is really easy for any merchant to set up in affiliate marketing; the costs are relatively low and majority of that cost should be performance based.  So if you have merchants that you want to see in affiliate marketing, you can always send the merchant an email about your sites and explain what affiliate marketing is.

Another option could be to send the merchant a contact within a network or an agency that could explain the costs and benefits of the affiliate campaign.

Lammo

I would say the best thing to do is to develop the site, maybe whack Adsense on there and then show the potential new merchant the site that you’re sending loads of relevant traffic to their competitors with.

Once they’re biting your arm off to feature them on there, introduce them to your friendly network representative, who can explain the benefits in more detail to them.

I would say it’s fairly easy for a small merchant to get set up these days – you no longer need thousands of pounds in set-up fees or a small team of techies to get the tracking/feeds working.

First up is a Surgery review of Dan Harrison’s EnviroGadget site. Dan started the site in June 2008 having previously run a niche site all about spy gadgets. Finding spy gadgets to be a little too niche, he decided to look for a different angle and decided to combine the eco-friendly products sector with gadgets to create EnviroGadget. Since its launch, Dan has achieved a daily RSS reader count of 550+ with the site receiving around 500 unique visitors a day, and a recent award from Time Magazine’s “The Green Design 100”.

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Dan asks the docs:

“My site is http://www.envirogadget.com

After lots of link building and work, I now have about 500 unique visitors a day and ~550 RSS readers.

I’m making around $125 a month from Google Adsense, and about $30 a month from Chitika. The site generates around £20 every 3 months using affiliate links through ThinkGeek (US), Nigel’s Eco Store (UK), Maplin (UK) plus a few more.

I’ve tried a banner for Think Geek to target US visitors, but over a month, it’s had no sales at all. All commission so far has been through reviews of products.

I promote affiliate related products by doing normal reviews, but with a link to the product and a buy now button.

For example:

http://www.envirogadget.com/clocks-and-watches/customisable-mud-powered-digital-clock/

http://www.envirogadget.com/solar-powered/handy-solar-powered-keychain-flashlight/

I’ve not plastered the site with Google Adsense so that it doesn’t annoy my readers. However, I feel that my earnings are really low given my level of traffic, and I don’t know how to fix it.

Any feedback and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.”

Here’s what Lammo, Kieron and Kirsty had to say:

Lammo

Do you know that you’re getting a decent level of US visitors? Otherwise that could explain why you’re seeing sales from the UK merchants, but not the US one!

You say the reviews are doing well, and it’s not surprising – they are very good, and probably the key selling point about the site. I’d keep on adding them, perhaps adding a more prominent call to action where users can buy the product (tell your users what you want them to do … BUY THIS PRODUCT!).

I’d also add some direct merchant links to bestselling/popular products in the sidebar rather than the “Google Search” and “Advertise Here” buttons – something like this perhaps:

http://easycontentunits.com/ecu_eco_products.html

Why not produce some “how to be greener” guides giving general advice about composting, using water butts, energy saving etc, which you could feature prominently on the site, and incorporate product links into?

Kieron

The site looks good, a few bits of feedback for you:

There is a lot of wasted white space on the right hand side. As soon as you scroll down past 3 or 4 posts you get pretty much half of the space wasted. Think about moving to a 2 column layout.

Get rid of the Adsense ads at the top of the individual posts. These just look unprofessional and annoying. Instead build some ad blocks within the homepage. Take a look at Autoblog.com and TechCrunch.com to see how well they integrate ads into the homepage and the sidebars. There is no need to “trick” users into clicking Adsense ads at the beginning of blog posts, it isn’t 2003 anymore. I would also recommend that you approach some eco retailers and ask them to advertise on your blog. Create 3 to 4 ad slots and charge £150 per month per slot. At those prices you should be able to sell them easy. Then when demand and traffic grows you can increase the prices. Put together a really good media pack that outlines the benefits or advertising on your site.

Your blog posts seem very short. In order to get maximum visibility from the search engines start writing posts of a minimum of 300 words and at the very, very least write 1 new blog post a day. Ideally 3 to 5 though.

You could also do with featuring your Twitter feed on the homepage. Speaking of which, your Twitter feed reads more like an RSS feed. Try to stimulate conversation and interact with your Twitter followers more instead of just Tweeting about a new blog post.

Kirsty

I agree completely with you Dan that you are only earning a very small amount of money for the level of visitors you have been achieving. It is a decent looking blog too, clean cut and well laid out. I’m not sure if perhaps you have altered your site structure since submitting your question in order to help monetise it with Adsense, but I’d certainly call your posts “plastered” in Adsense at the moment! I think you are going to have to choose whether this is an Adsense site or an affiliate site. I find those ads extremely offputting, and I find it difficult to focus on the page content because of them.

Adsense considerations aside, there are a few things we need to think about here.

What percentage of your 500 visitors per day actually make it through to merchant? If the percentage is low, then you may need to look for reasons why and try to resolve them.  Your calls to action may not be strong enough to compel your visitors to visit your merchants. I’d suggest taking a look at a highly successful merchant site in your sector. Place yourself in the position of a shopper looking to buy something, and check out how they funnel their traffic through to point of sale and try to emulate that as far as possible within the constraints of your blog structure.

Alternatively, your traffic may not be targeted enough to compel your visitors to visit your merchant, i.e. what you are ranking for and what you are targeting are two different things! If a healthy proportion of your traffic is getting through to merchants it may be that for some reason they are not able to convert your traffic. If this is the case it may be an idea to seek out other merchants and test your traffic with them instead.

Another idea might be for you to set up your own shopping resource and add it as a feature within your blog. If you have lots of subscribers why not simply ask them what kind of green products they are likely to buy, perhaps even run a survey with a small prize draw as an incentive and really find out who your readers are, and what they are looking for when they search online and end up on your site.

Editor’s Note

Dan has made some changes to the site recently since submitting for review and it being published, so you may see that some aspects of the review have been addressed.

Thanks for writing in and submitting your site for review, I hope it helps you out with some ideas. You’ve got a great site there and it’s obviously pulling in a nice audience for you to target. I’d agree on the Google Adsense front, but can also see that it’s bringing in most of your revenue at the moment.  If you need the money for now, perhaps you could work on building the affiliate side before winding it down. Alternatively, why not try posting your newer articles ‘Adsense free’ for the first couple of weeks or so, and then add them to the older posts so that your regular readers don’t have to see it (I think Al has experience with this). On the more blog posts front, I know this can be a headache especially if you’re still working full time in another job – but maybe it’s time to outsource and get some trusted writers on board?

What did you think of Dan’s site?

“I have created my website, Martial Arts Fitness www.martialartsfitness.org.uk and would like to have the site reviewed.

The site has been active for less than a week, and the aim of it is to provide the following:

1.  Deals for “mixed martial art” enthusiasts (and hopefully, get a referral)
2.  Offer a personalised blog with advice
3.  Generate interest in people signing up on the gambling websites in order to bet on mixed martial art events

Any advice on how to promote the site via SEO and other methods would be much appreciated.  I would love to make it a success with your help!

Thanks in advance.”

Kier

Hi Steve.

Generally the site looks good, you have some decent looking content for sure. However, the homepage feels quite cluttered, I would simplify it somewhat so that more content is visible per post. Maybe go for a more standard blog layout. Keep the gambling ads in a relatively consistent place in the template if this is one of the main focuses, and then deeplink to training equipment deals from within text.

As to promoting the site I’d look at writing some articles for article directories and also trying to get guest post spots on other more well known blogs in the subject area to get yourself noticed. Commenting on other’s posts, having a signature in your forum posts etc will all help as well. MMA is quite a hot area at the moment, but there are also a lot of high quality sites out there so you will have to really persevere to get noticed, but if you are passionate about the topic then you have a great reason to keep writing.

The keywords in your title for the homepage are currently very broad and as such you’re unlikely to rank well for them without lots of work. I’d suggest doing some keyword research and finding a more defined phrase that you think you can do well on. Each post of course should have separate title and header tags depending on the content in order to get the long tail traffic as you’re currently replicating the homepage’s title tag at the end of each post’s title.

Steve

Hi Steve.

Thanks for sending in your site for review; looks like you’ve got plenty of content up there already.

From a readers point of view, I agree with Kier, it looks pretty cluttered at the moment.  Apart from the strapline “One stop shop for MMA deals and reviews”, it’s not very clear as to what the site’s main focus is without some digging around.  It doesn’t help having so much crammed onto the homepage, so I’d clean it up a little and perhaps restrict the number of post exceprts you’re showing to a small subset of the main categories you want to feature.

The top menu has a lot of categories, so maybe you could put your key pages up top (home, about, subscribe, contact etc.) and list the other categories in a sidebar (as you have done), but not so that it’s hidden way down the page where people are unlikely to see it.  That should help to give the site more of a structured look.

As you clearly have a lot of experience and a passion for mixed martial arts, you could make the ‘advice’ and ‘instructionals’ sections more prominent and really concentrate on adding some great content to help pull more visitors in; it could be a great way for you to interact with your readers and build a loyal following.

Another area that will help to de-clutter – the ads.  Some people may disagree, but I would ditch most of the ads to start with (too many banners/Google AdSense etc.) and focus on building your readership first, and then think about targeting some well placed ads/sponsorship when it’s more established.

Hope the suggestions help and best of luck.

Hi Doctors!

I’ve been thinking of adding a blog to my online pin badge shopping site www.badgefreaks.com, but I’ve not taken the plunge yet. My main concern is whether it adds any value?

I can see the benefit of being able to add the latest products and services, particularly the ability to explain in length what these additions are rather than the sort basic descriptions on the site.  However, if a month goes by without anything being added does it then look out of date and possibly be seen in a negative light?

Thanks for your time.

Kieron

A blog is basically fresh content to your site and Google loves fresh unique content so yes, you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD add a blog.

In answer to your second question you should try to add content to the blog as often as possible, ideally daily. If you can’t update it more than once a month then you’re probably right, there is no point to adding a blog that will only get updated a few times a year.

Lammo

Hey Mike,

Adding a blog could add value to Badge Freaks – It can enable your visitors to subscribe to updates for the new releases etc., via email, RSS readers, homepages etc – You can also use widgets such as SpringWidgets to add your latest posts to other sites, Facebook, wherever your target audience hang out.

Of course, a barren blog with no posts for a long period of time can look outdated and reflect badly on the site owner – however you can schedule posts for the future, so instead of whacking 10 up in one day, you could schedule one a day every weekday for the next 2 weeks?

Adding a blog isn’t going to cost you anything but time, so you can always have a go, and if you decide it isn’t for you, you can always pull it?

Al

Adding a blog will give you fresh content (which search engines love), you’ll be able to ping other sites when you publish a post, and to me the biggest benefit is it gives you a platform to network with other bloggers. Link out to relevant blogs, this can be both interesting to your readers and will also attract attention from other bloggers.

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Hosted on Google’s own blogging platform, Blogger, he started it off in May of this year and wanted some help with the following questions:

“This is a great idea.  Thank you!

At present, I am trying to use article marketing to make affiliate sales.  I have placed several articles on to Ezinearticles.com to drive traffic to my blog at http://find-cheap-life-insurance-online.blogspot.com. This then encourages people to visit the merchant website – Jump Life Insurance.

I would be grateful to know:

1. Traffic from the articles is relatively low.  How can I increase it dramatically?

2. The traffic comes mainly from the USA.  How can I increase traffic from the UK?

3. What could I do to improve my blog landing page?

4. What do you think about the strategy I am using?  Be honest – I can take it!

5. What is the best strategy for making sales as an affiliate?  I’d be interested know what model works best.  I know it might be difficult, but could you supply an example of successful affiliate campaign?

I look forward to hearing from you.  Good luck in your new venture.  We newbie’s need you!”

Here’s what Kieron, Lammo and Kier had to say: 

Kieron

1. Article marketing is largely ineffective and a very poor way of marketing your site. I would suggest dropping this form of marketing altogether.

2. As above, stop using article marketing on US sites. Concentrate on the UK instead.

3. Create a custom template so it stands out and add more content. At the moment you have 1 blog post and that’s all, yours is possibly the most “thin” affiliate site I have ever seen.

4. Your strategy is pointless. As I said above article marketing is ineffective. Your site is nothing more than 1 blog post and adds no value to anyone. Instead create a site you will be proud of and offers genuinely useful advice and content to users – and lots of it.

5. Too broad a question. The best strategy is to build a site about something you have an interest or knowledge of. That way you can become an authority in that sector and position yourself as an expert. Write lots and lots of quality engaging content and work hard. Oh and don’t use spammy keyword stuffed domains like yours. Finally, don’t chase the money, follow your passion.

Lammo

Wow John – do you think you’ve got enough hyphens in that blog address? Seriously, something with that many hyphens in it looks spammy, and even your average joe public guy surfing the net gets turned off by it – get yourself a decent domain name for a few quid a year, and point it at your blog (masking the url of course!) or even better, install WordPress on it and host it yourself.

As I look at the “site” now, you created it nearly a month ago, made one post and haven’t done anything with it since. To me, that’s a thinly veiled spammy site, and one that has no longevity in this Industry. Believe me, I’ve been there, created crappy landing pages that have made money, but that was 5 years ago, and it’s a damn sight harder to do that now.

The content you’ve written is actually pretty good, but there’s far too little of it. Nowadays, I’m building sites that are contain hundreds of pages, and hundreds of thousands of words of unique, hand-written content. It’s not easy, and it takes a hell of a long time to pay off, but these are sites that will still be going strong in 5 or even 10 years time. I have a feeling that http://find-cheap-life-insurance-online.blogspot.com won’t be (at least in its current incarnation). If you really are passionate about writing about financial products, then flesh out the site – blog daily, even if it’s about stuff that isn’t going to earn you any money – gain a loyal following, and in time you will gain trust and be able to make a killing when you DO post something that makes you money – think Martin Lewis! 

Kier

Hi John.

To answer your questions:

1. Write more articles  Submit them to more article sites. There are hundreds out there and there are various pieces of software, websites and paid services to do the submissions for you. You can also get software to ‘spin’ the articles so that they appear more unique to the search engines.

2. Try and focus your content more on the UK market. But don’t ignore that US traffic! Geotarget your ads and show relevant US merchants to those visiting from the states.

3. I was unable to view your landing page when writing this so unfortunately can’t offer much detailed advice. I would say however that you’d be well served by moving over to a domain name that you own and control the hosting for so that your visitors don’t have the same experience I did!

4. Writing articles to drive traffic alone is going to be somewhat labour intensive if you ever want to make a decent income. I would be focusing on building up your own rankings for natural traffic. Articles can help with this by including links with your choice of anchor text, but you are likely to find a market such as life insurance a bit tough, so maybe find some other less competitive niches and work on them at the same time as this one.

5. There is no one way to make money as an affiliate that stands out above all others. Lots of newbies do well with small, niche content sites. These don’t take too long to build in terms of time or money, and as such, if they don’t work it’s no big loss, but if they do then you can expand in the niche and also keep building others. Smingle and Affi on the a4uforum have lots of threads giving advice on this strategy. As you’re already working with an actual site and content writing as opposed to paid search I’d advise considering this.

Steve

Thanks for sending in your site for review and the thumbs up on Affiliate Doctors, hope it’s given you a few pointers. Just to add, at the time of checking your affiliate link to Jump Life Insurance sent me through to a 404 – don’t forget to keep an eye on the links you’re using.  It is a VERY competitive market to tackle (think moneysupermarket etc.), but if you are determined to give it a go, you mention that you have 20 years experience in Financial Services, so at least you have an interest in the field.  Having had a quick squizz at your profile, it looks like you’ve set up a couple of other financially related pages on Blogger; perhaps have a think about how you could amalgamate things into one blog. If anything in here has put you off the idea, there are loads of niche areas you could focus on, and as Kier said, check out Smingle’s (Frank Paul) post on the A4U forum.