The Affiliate Black Book has been in the works for over 2 years now. If you know anything about Mr. X, his affiliate marketing techniques are quite aggressive. If you’ve been following his blog and the progress of this project you may have noticed that this seems to be the most aggressive material yet.
It is my honest opinion that many so called affiliate marketing teachers do not teach what X teaches for several reasons:
– they do not want their names to be associated with tactics that are out of the ordinary and may ruffle some feathers
– they do not want to teach anything that is overtly aggressive as the majority cannot stomach a highly aggressive business strategy
– they are worried about how certain tactics would reflect on their reputation
This is what separates X and his Affiliate Black Book. This guy simply doesn’t care about being in the “guru” clique. He has masterfully crafted a persona where the more aggressive the tactics, the better it plays to his reputation. This is a sharp contrast from most people who teach you how to make money online. Pay close attention to the tone of the sales copy for any Mr. X product. Crafting a persona that speaks to your core audience is one of the reasons that Mr. X has been so successful at affiliate marketing. This is something that you can harness is any market. You can even create multiple personas for the same market and test them against each other. This will allow you to connect with a broader slice of the market.
X’s Affiliate Blackbook is geared to provide a comprehensive strategy for affiliate marketing. What X wants you to grasp with this guide, is that affiliate marketing is a viable business model when done the right way. With ad costs increasing, it is becoming more and more profitable to use affiliate marketing as a testing ground and a list building tool so that you can move into markets with your own products. This is one way that you can maximize the potential of affiliate marketing. It is something that many affiliate do not want to do because it seems complex. But if you start off with this as an end goal, then you can craft your affiliate campaigns in a manner that will make this transition much easier.
Just some of what I expect to see from The Affiliate Blackbook includes:
Aggressive PPC strategies: Being aggressive with pay per click advertising no longer constitutes playing outside of Google’s or Yahoo’s rules, but has shifted towards optimizing your ad campaigns to give the search engines exactly what they want.
Expandable affiliate business models: Affiliate marketing can be a great business in and of itself, but it can also be expanded upon to create a larger business. This model is not as difficult as many believe it is. It is more of a shift in thinking than anything else. That is why it is vitally important to always keep an open mind and actively look at the business models of other affiliate marketers. There are many ways to build an affiliate business. Some models can yield greater returns because the structure of the campaigns is optimal for growth.
Cookie stuffing – this topic is almost taboo for most marketers, but if done correctly it can act to help facilitate the sale rather than break any merchant’s terms of service. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The good thing is, the right way is more profitable.
Blog optimization strategies – Having a blog that is optimized for the search engines can be a great benefit to any affiliate business. The blog can be utilized in many ways to drive the sale. I expect X to discuss using the blog to attack keywords and increase traffic, as well as convince potential customers of the value of the product/products you are promoting.
In 2008, X made it very public that he migrated all of his campaigns from static html pages to WordPress blogs. This in turn improved his AdWords quality scores, bringing down his cost per click (or improving his ad placement). Blogs are extremely powerful and if you are not using them in your affiliate marketing business, you could be paying more than necessary for advertising and not getting the search engine rankings that your content warrants. Investing some time into learning to use WordPress blogs can pay great dividends by increasing traffic, lowering ad costs, and improving conversions.
Bottom line: this stands to be a very in depth look at affiliate marketing tactics, but more importantly, strategy. Mr. X has built an affiliate business that has grown tremendously in a relatively short amount of time. There is great value in analyzing his business models and taking out components that will improve the way you do business as an affiliate.
