SEOs Making More Money as Affiliates?

HI All,


I'm new to this forum. Just wondering how many of you are supplementing your SEO income or even replacing it with Affiliate income? Many of my top affiliates have a SEO company or used to do SEO full-time. Many realized that if they could make money for clients by getting them top rankings, they could make more money doing SEO for themselves.

An affiliate for one of the companies I consult for is really good at the SEO game plus great at doing PPC as well. He is consistantly making 4 - 5K a month, just off of the one affiliate program and they market several others as well. So any of you who are trying to figure out in the other thread, how to attract new clients, may consider doing affiliate marketing for well chosen programs to generate steady on-going income for you.

I used to do SEO but when it got so competitive and everything started moving toward PPC, I decided to switch my efforts to the affiliate marketing side of things.

I've had some nice offers to promote affiliate portals/directories for example for a share in profits, where of course good SEM can make good money. I'm still however very much in the SEO business, and doing very nicely at it. As long as there are still regular serps on Google, then imo there is a need for a company to use traditional SEO services. I dont have the time to start new projects right now. I might start ppc management soon, but I havent really been bitten by the affiliate cash making thing yet I have to say lol.

The PPC business requires good SEO and good business sense. Even the adwords at google reward relevance and will promote your listing above others who have bid higher if you demonstrate better relevance (SEO) and greater clickthroughs (business sense) - plus it takes good business sense to word your ads so that every body who is simply surfing does not give you a clickthrough. When I first started using PPC the clickthrough fees were chewing a hole in my wallet. Then I changed my bidding, wording and keywords.

Anybody can throw up an affiliate site and if you read the research on them the average affilate doesn't earn spit. If you want to do the best job at it you need to sell what you know (or learn a lot) so that you can develop credible content and do proper keyword research; know SEO to get good rankings; and, be good at marketing on top of those two. I didn't even mention being a strong web developer.

Because these talents only rarely converge in a single person, I think that just about anyone will have a need for content, SEO, development or business consultation. If you think that you know it all then I doubt that you are reaching your potential. The most successful person will be the one who knows an awful lot about these things and who also knows where he / she can benefit from expert advice.

Then you have a comapny like amazon who hires TEAMS of these people and sends them out to dominate the web. I've only been in ecommerce a year or two and have already noticed that things are being constsricted.

We are still in the easy days of selling on the web. Make your money now and never stop learning or the other guy is going to eat your lunch.

Fathom said he is retiring in three years and two... Sounds like he was one of the smart guys who jumped on early.

I definitely agree with you on that one EGOL! Many experts have referred to the Internet as being in an adolescence stage.

In the past it has been fairly easy for anyone to start making money online with nothing but a simple affiliate web site and a little SEO knowledge. But when the Internet reaches adult hood, the only people who will still be making money will be the people who concentrated on building a solid business now.

-Jon

I agree Jon. I spend about 10 - 20% of my time educating myself, researching keywords and competition. A site like this where people exchange ideas is very important to learning.

If you don't keep learning your great business of today will be slowly stolen by your competitors and outdated by changes in the sales environment.

Affiliate marketing is a good way to test ideas. Maybe four out of ten times the affiliate arrangement will pay the cost of the test, and one out of ten it will be profitable. In the long run, the SEO/Affiliate is just creating a freelance doorway page. I would like to spend time on better things that add more real value to the net.

Go for it!

I think we are in the baby stages of the internet. Basically, there are two main uses for the internet info and purchasing. The idea is to share info. That's great but if the info site isn't making $ then the internet newness novelity will wear off. And the site will close down.

Top affiliates are SEO experts - some are just not for hire.

Some feel the need to "add value to the net" - that's very thoughtful. You can do that by having benefical content in your site whether it is with affiliates or not. Or you can give to your local charity. The local shop owner gives back to the community by giving to charities.

I hope the affiliate $ continues, but it seems too good to be true. So we must save so we too can follow Fathom and retire.

I am employed full time as the SEO for an online software company. I have been with them over six months.

If I would have signed up for them as an affiliate instead of on salary, I would be making about $10,000 a month in affiliate commissions at this point. I am paid from them much less than that but I need the benefits.

After seeing the success I had for them, I decided to start doing my OWN SEO for personal affiliate sites. After about 6 months, I now make about 2 times each month what they are paying me (several thousand dollars).

There are advantages to starting your own SEO service, but any good SEO that does not jump into affiliate marketing is making a mistake IMO (on the other hand, stay out! It's less competition for me ;) ). I may start a SEO company shortly however for a limited time.

But, when I decide Im ready for a break from SEO work, I'll be out on the boat or taking a nap with the recurring affiliate commissions coming in while you are still dealing with headaches from confused clients.

Of course who knows how Google will change within that time.

"Top affiliates are SEO experts - some are just not for hire. " -- Agreed.

Guys, interesting story in relation to this topic. Its is almost for similar to "Amazon hiring a bunch of people to dominate the web".

About 4 months ago, a very large affiliate company (name withheld), probably one of the largest on the net today, approached me, and told me that it would pay me to build a web site to promote such programs. "No quidelines, do it anyway you like it, here is $300 dollars, we just want you to build a site and search engine optimize it like crazy". Well I liked the material a lot and I had room to work on a spare site at the time, so I gave it a go. Figured they were paying for the website, not me. Six months later, it turned out very successful deal. I think more for me then them, but its my work and vision that got it there.

Now, how this applies to SEO, is that the company found the website I advertise my SEO services under. Liked what they saw, and realized that if I was to build a site, list there programs, it would make money for ME and for THEM. Now, I know for a fact that one out of the 100 people they approached didn't make the affiliate company much money, because they lacked either SEO, or any kind of business sense and vision to make it happen.

But the company told me that, the few people that are successful with building the website, are the most important part, because they make most of the money for the affiliate company. Its a few, not a many.

Well unforunately, for them I had other ideas, and developed other affilates in line with the main company, and actually made more money from other smaller affiliates then the main company. But they got what they wanted and so did I. I don't know if there are still doing the tactics that brought me in, but I think its over for now. But, it goes to show that SEO is an important part of Affiliate Marketing, because even the companies realize it.

I do not compete with my clients. And none of employees are allowed to do it. As a website consultant it is important to avoid conflicts of interests.

However I do have some affiliate sites, and I could make a decent living from them only, but I keep it seperate from my main business (the sites belong to me not my company).

This is surely the way to do it. By day - consultant for other company. By night - affiliate marketer! Yeehaw!!

I would say on the ethics issue that if your company supplies seo or consulting services to a client site selling computers then it doesn't matter if your "company" owns a site selling computers or you personally do, your still ethically in the wrong.

Now I don't think web or marketing consultants are in the wrong to start businesses, it shows they believe in their methods. As the saying goes, "those who can - do and those who can't - teach". Just be up front with clients about your other business affairs and turn down work that "directly" conflicts with your other customers or your other business dealings.

That's my opinion anyway.

mktman

Hi again all and thanks for the replies. (I used to be Catalyst)

I have not been able to get into this forum lately, don't know why. So finally set up a new account and still have a hard time getting in. This is the 1st day I have been able to post for awhile here.

Anyway some great advice and experiences in this thread since I last checked. I just talked to an SEO pro yesterday and he was wondering how to broach the subject of aff mktg to some of his SEO clients. I suggested once his SEO contract runs out, if they have an aff program to tell them he has a new Pay For Performance optimization service and he would build pages and send them traffic at no charge. They only had to pay for sales. I used to do SEO and so I told him I thought it was a good way to extend the life of a client who's contract was up. That is IF you like the client and the products. Or maybe even offer CPA as another option to offer prospects who want a low ball quote. What do you think of that idea?

I would not talk about SEO and pay for performance in the same breath. Currently SEO people might be among the best performing affiliates. The argument for Affiliate programs and PPC is that they allow many different marketing techiniques under a common umbrella.

The SEO affiliate works because of leaks in the search engines. There are also affiliates who have trusted customer bases,