Super Affiliate Marketing Blog

See, what a lot of you are doing is wrong. You are waiting to make it big on one specific niche, and then find a few more just like it. What you should be doing is realizing that every profitable campaign, is VERY good, and focus on volume. When I mentioned to start with one or two niches it was just so that you could literally prove to yourself that it works. Now that you know it works, it’s time to go for volume.

Personally, I don’t touch anything anymore that doesn’t convert at 3:1 on my investment, but that’s just me. And that’s also kinda high too. If you’re doing 1.5:1 or 2:1 at least, then you are onto something good. There’s no reason why you can’t do more, spend more and make more. Alright, maybe the cash on hand situation is different and all, but remember that as you add more niches and more campaigns, your ROI ratio will continue to climb. So if you are at a low 1.5:1 on your investment, by the time you are at 100 niches, your ratio will have climbed to at least 2.5:1, and from there you should know you are onto something VERY good.

Also, you don’t necessarily have to stick it out with Adsense, you can do it with YPN if you’re in their beta program, or other contextual ad networks that offer decent payouts on specific niches. Depending solely on Google may be easier and all, but it’s not smarter. You should try and leverage the ads and show the ads on the page that payout the best for that niche. Google only has the advantage that it’s easy to implement, it’s geoip targeted, and their system works based on the content. YPN, you get to cherry pick your niche, and have up to two niches per page, but they also let you plaster on as many ads as you like, and all you have to do is put an “I barrier” to seperate the images from the ads, which isn’t too bad either. Their cpc rate is also a hell of a lot more than Adsense’s, but the downside is that they only have 120 categories.

So do your homework and research, and aim to get your campaigns running on a volume basis, rather than hoping and praying that your adsense earnings jump to $3 a click on your mesothelioma page. There are MILLIONS of niches out there that no one touches, and figure, if you are spending $0.01-$0.03 a click for traffic, you’re going to get at least $0.08 a click, so that’s already a profit, true, it’s nothing huge, but on a volume scale of spending $50-$100 a day on cheap traffic, and sending it to different niches spread out, you’re going to turn a very niche profit overall. Also, in the longrun, you can go for years being one of the only publishers using adsense for that niche, it’s really great.

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I am pleased to announce that the new add-on section for the WickedFire forum is right on schedule. The launch date window is still at Oct 1st-15th. I know it’s a pretty wide window for a launch and all, but this way if it needs to be extended for any delay it will be done easily. Although I cannot elaborate on what the new area will include, I can leak some info and say that without hyping the crap out of it, from what the beta guys have seen and said, it looks amazing, and there is NOTHING out there like this. We are going to pioneer the next step in how media and information is delivered to everyone within the internet marketing industry. This doesn’t include the scammy MLM area or the get rich quick crowd, so if you are one of those, please exit this blog now, and jump off a bridge, thanks!

I’d also like to announce that WickedFire is now a trademark! Yep, I went ahead and got the brand to be a US Trademark. When the forum first launched I had the logo and actual name “wicked fire” and “wickedfire” copyrighted, so that since it was a 100% unique and original idea by me, that no one would squat it with domains or steal the brand. I was also advised by my lawyers to trademark it before the launch of the new resource area, so that nothing bad would happen, and to protect the brand itself just in case some idiot tried to leech off of it’s success. See, not all lawyers are bad, just the ones that sue you, which hopefully I will not be on that side anytime soon, or ever for that matter.

Finally, the area to which WickedFire will be extending it’s brand is…. Affiliate marketing. Yep, we’ve decided to break into the affialite network industry. Don’t be alarmed though, we are not going to be a competitor for Azoogleads or Copeac or any of those guys. Their business models and ours are completely different. Those types of networks act as the middleman between the merchants and the affiliates. They don’t actually own and operate their own sites, and the ones that they say they do, are always linked to some third party merchant. I’m not sure what the program will be called just yet, but we are launching 30 new subscription sites by December 2006. All of the sites will be 100% owned and operated by our parent company (my partner and I). Payouts are going to be huge and quick. We will be offering quick payouts within 15 days of whatever sale was made by the affiliate. No more net 15-30. Our sites will work on a subscription model only, and we’ll be offering recurring payouts to affiliates, so that if you make 100 sales at $10 one month, the billing will recur for the life of that membership, and the affiliate will gain credit for it until the user cancels. That right there means a residual income for sales you may have made 6 months ago, and now affiliates will be able to get more for their marketing dollar spent. We’ll also be including a ton of markting tools that no one else has, or has ever used before. Using our affiliate program will not replace your current network, but more or less act as a complimented service, because you can still go about your day promoting ringtones and mortgages, but if you want to take the revenue earned from there, and market subscription sites on the side, you can quickly build up a steady income without doing more work.

Well, that’s it for now. I would also like to add though, that at WickedFire we are looking for freelance article/content writers/journalists, so if you are interested, or know someone, or would even like to recommend someone for the gig, use the contact form on this site and shoot me a message. The positions don’t pay, but the perks you can get for being on our media team sure make it worth your while.

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It’s that time of year again.. no, Christmas is not just around the corner, but the holiday shopping season is. It generally hit’s it’s peak here in the US on Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving), and continues on into Christmas/New Years. Most of the brick and mortar stores, especially the toys and electronics stores use the back to school time as a period to start gearing up for the holiday shopping surge that they all bank off of. So why not have websites do the same? I mean, it doesn’t hurt to make a Christmas goods site now, or offer some type of service shortly for it.

Figure, the best traffic to get from the holiday season surge is natural search, so if you made a site now, and optimized it for the engines, and started to plan, design, and develope it before Halloween (Oct 31st), you should be able to get some good solid rankings for your keyword themes by December, when the shopping will start picking up at a huge pace.

Some items you may want to optimize for, or at least look for merchants with affiliate programs.. Definitely electronics. The newest phones are a big comodity. I keep seeing the HP Notebook selling for under $1k USD, whether you’re a fan of HP or not, the price is what dictates the amount of conversions. Finally, what will be the hottest selling items.. The PS3 and Wii systems. The first launch of only 2 million units of PS3 for the entire North America is set for mid-Nov, the second launch of about 4 million units is set for Christmas time. The Nintendo Wii system, although smaller and a lot different, will be much cheaper, and it’s first launch date is in October I think. The second launch date is around the same time. The PS3 is going to retail at $500-$600 depending on the model, and the Wii will be at either $199 or $299, not sure exactly. Also let’s not forget cameras, video cameras too, LCD/Plasmas, Stereos, Satelite Radio systems, iPods and the cajillion accessories, etc. The list goes on and on, and since this isn’t a tech blog, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But the point is, electronics sell the best. For women, shoes and makeup do very well too. Accessories like designer handbags from the previous seasons or ones for the winter will also do especially well. Basically if it’s a woman’s item, and it belongs in a luxury store, it will do very well for the season. Try and stay away from the knockoffs though, because even though they’ll get you more sales, the feds have been pretty tight with cracking down on sellers, so leave that to people in China to do.

Overall, your goal for September & October should be to create 5 or 10 different sites all focusing on different types of products. Give it the ‘ol snowflakes with Santa design theme too if you really want to get serious. Make sure you do a ton of research, and listen in on forums when they discuss the big toy of the season, because getting a hold of that information before your competitors can mean a huge upperhand for you.

So get out there and start gearing up for the big shopping season of the holidays. If you put it off now, you’ll just keep doing so until it’s too late.

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I’ve been noticing this lately, and been speaking to many insiders, including affiliate network owners, managers, and affiliates themselves. There are tons of new campaigns being launched specifically targeting affiliates in the UK. Personally, I think it’s about time they went this route. For years there was a lot of speculation and talk about making things China friendly, because of China’s size in population, and the number of people who are online already versus the number of potential users, it’s pretty massive. But why focus on a country that is so different from the US, when just across the pond, there is a country who is considered the right hand man of the US?

I think networks are finally realizing that programs that work well here, have a great potential to work in the UK. Some of the 2nd tier affiliate networks that are establishing themselves in the UK now with offices there and full affiliate managing teams are Copeac and PrimeQ just to name some. I consider them 2nd tier, because they all run similar campaigns from the same merchants, although a few of them do have exclusive campaigns that the others don’t. But overall, even though they are all competitors technically, they do a lot of network sharing and partnering to get the advertisers the volume they are seeking.

Now with the push into the UK market, affiliates out there can finally get campaigns catered to them, their traffic, their requirements, and best of all, their currency. Soon the day will come where they no longer have to deal with the crummy dollar exchange rate to the all mighty GBP. No more checking out xe.com for the up to the minute exchange rate either. You UK affiliates will have the same mobile phone, email/zip submits and financial data lead gen offers that we have, because all of those offers have a huge and fairly untapped market compared to what us US guys have.

I think it’s truly a great sign when you see American HQ’ed companies expanding overseas to the UK too. It shows that earnings and ad spending is up, way up, compared to the years of the dot-bomb. If you were an affiliate or even marketer back then, you probably never thought you’d see the light at the end of the tunnel when payouts went sky high again, but thankfully, it only took three years or so for that to happen again. We all learned a hell of a lot too, both about the industry, and our traffic.

So kudos to the agencies who are expanding their affiliate network reach to our comrades in the UK, and an even bigger high five to my affiliate brothers in the UK who will now have their own choice of networks, offers, advertisers, and more cash generation to fool around with. You networks that are making the move get a nod of appreciation from me, because it’s about fucking time!

(thought I’d make a post with no profanity there didn’t ya!)

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Just thought I’d let everyone know that a WickedFire news bulletin newsletter is being prepared and will be sent out shortly. Don’t worry, there will be an opt-out option for everyone that doesn’t want to get it again, but the newsletter will be sent out every now and then with some really good info to help everyone out. It will include industry news, an article or two, quick tips, some random niches, hot topics on WickedFire, and other crap that I haven’t thought through just yet. I also need to figure out the whole template thing, heh.

Also a quick note, I’ve been getting some really good feedback and applicants to the post I made yesterday about WF looking to hire researchers and writers. There really are a ton of creative people out there, and it’s cool to see that tons of you really want to help out with the community. Kudos to everyone who have been accepted too. I’ll leave it up until the new resource sections are launched (early Oct 2006) so that if you feel you can contribute, you’ll be added to the list of people looking to help out. The job itself is pretty easy. I just want the upcoming news section to report exclusive and non-exclusive stories on our industry so that it gives all of the readers both publishers and merchants information in one spot. If you have a knack for researching articles and stories, then this is the type of gig for you to really shine in. Bloggers are welcome too!

Okay, 3am here, time to head to sleep early!

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