Is a business plan needed for direct linking affiliate approach?
Submitted by servercraft on Sat, 07/12/2008 - 07:57.
Hello Jeremy,
Would you have a word of advice for those who wish to start their affiliate marketing career through the direct linking approach?
Is all the elaborate preparation mentioned in blackink2 necessary or even useful? Or, should I be spending more time on the following:
1.) Finding good merchants and products to promote, especially ones that have great sales pages
2.) Learning keyword research skills
3.) Learning the specifics of YSM and Adcenter?
Thanks,
Venkat
You say no business plan!
Venkat
If your aim is to create a "business" via the direct linking approach, you will certainly need to start off with a business plan. Sorry. The correct approach to starting any business will include a well thought out business plan. It may not be the most exciting thing to do if you have never done it before but it will save you the heartache a month or so down the road when you realise your approach to affiliate marketing/niche was more emotional than business sense. Some have succeeded in business without considering a business plan, but if you heard on the news that a lady survived a 20,000ft parachute jump when her parachute failed to open, would you jump out of a plane at 20,000 feet without a parachute the following day??
Part of your business plan will include your mentioned 1. 2. and 3.
I would direct the excitement and testosorne you have now to a "rock solid business plan" and you will increase your chances of succeeding. Learn to enjoy preparing business plans like all the successful entrepreneurs out there. If there is anything you do not want to rush, its preparing a business plan!!
Alvin
Alvin,
Alvin,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I realize now that I was being silly, especially because I am writing a detailed business plan (actually purchased a book and following it step-by-step and all that) for a managed internet services startup - my other business.
I think the question that was at the back of my mind really was whether I could skip the site building and content building parts that Jeremy is now explaining in BlackInk2. If I'm doing direct linking to merchants with great sales pages (direct linking followed by thin sites followed by destination sites is how I wish to progress in affiliate marketing), would it make sense to focus on the three things I outlined above?
After preparing the business plan, of course ;-)
Venkat
I'm in the same boat
I have been pondering the same issue. I can't focus on all the stuff for creating a great site, NEW niche research, AND all the stuff for creating great PPC campaigns across all 3 search engines . It's just too much to start with and too much material to cover and skillset areas to improve.You'll be permanently stuck in analysis mode. Remember Jeremy was already at home with creating websites before doing AM
My approach is to stick with an industry niche where I really already understand the market from Customer mindset through to product creation and sell through. Then forget about website building for the time being and try to generate some conversion data for a specific sub-niche in your industry vertical.
If there are merchants with what you think are great converting websites then start with yahoo direct linking because they allow it as far as I know from the announcement in Feb this year.
You'll find it easy to continue tweaking you Yahoo campaign because you already know the industry well. Once you find a break-even product/service then it will be time to start pondering the investment to be made from investing in a site, But not till you reach that point.
After absorbing some of the
After absorbing some of the stuff in BlackInk 1 and 2 (or, was it the bonus sessions?), the biggest decision I took was to NOT do Google Adwords, but begin with YSM and AdCenter.
Handling PPC campaigns across 3 search engines is way too much for me, especially because I don't have a huge budget to begin with and Google being very stringent in its expectations.
Do you know if AdCenter allows direct linking?
Yahoo and Ad Center allow direct linking
Hi Servercraft,
Yes, both Yahoo and Ad Center allow direct linking. They are pretty lax on it. Just make sure you have small adgroups and relevant ads for the adgroups.
Hope this helps.
Renee
Thank you, Renee. So, can I
Thank you, Renee. So, can I take this to mean that Google doesn't allow direct linking?
Venkat
There has been much
There has been much discussion on this subject already in other threads - type in "direct linking" in the Search box above.
Google does allow it - but only allows one URL per keyword displayed on a given page and the destination URL must end up at the same domain as the display URL.
As pointed out in BIP 1 - starting PPC direct linking would be best served using Yahoo and MSN and only then after finding a profitable campaign - build a site and begin using Google PPC
Twitter.com/RyanHakes
I have tried direct linking
I have tried direct linking with Google and I got the legendary Google slap........