How to create your affiliate brand

The affiliate network “Where is the Elephant?” Continues the series of publications of foreign materials on affiliate marketing.

Previous article - “ Pay per action or affiliate program? ".

Articles are published on the materials of the online magazine Feedfront.com .
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Speaking about the most promising practices in affiliate marketing, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of creating partner brands instead of partner sites.

At one time, a standard approach to affiliate marketing was the creation of partner sites based on 50 articles of three hundred words each, representing various combinations of keywords. In modern competitive conditions, successful promotion of a partner site through optimizing it for search engines using similar tactics is ineffective.

If you want to not only blend in with the environment created by Google and Yandex, but also to thrive in it, you need to carry out activities to promote your website at a higher level.

So what is a partner brand? Let's look at the most striking example of a large-scale partner brand - the site Shopping.com. In fact, it simply aggregates data from various sites of partner networks. But they bought an easily remembered domain and, unlike competitors, offered users the opportunity to leave feedback on products, thus making their offer unique.

This distinctive feature of Shopping.com resulted in 4 million unique users per month, according to Quantcast data, and millions of dollars in profits every quarter. Of course, Shopping.com is a bright case of successful promotion of a partner site (and proof that it is possible not only to make a profit using a partner site, but also to create an independent business on its basis), but this does not mean that other partners cannot use this idea and repeat their success. And even if you don’t make millions like Shopping.com, having an affiliate brand will bring you significant profits.

Finding and proposing a differentiating difference for a particular partner site is exactly what partners think about most often. And, ultimately, such a difference will lead to the emergence of a brand.

So, how to create a partner brand?

1. Buy memorable "branded" domain names, not domains consisting of keywords to search for.

2. Find your niche and make your site interesting. Let's clarify right away - it’s not true that search engines don’t like affiliate sites. Google and Yandex do not like affiliate sites with non-unique content. Treat your partner site as a real business, in which you need to invest time and effort, and try to make the partner site different from others.

3. Make sure that at least 20% of the content of your site is unique, interesting, fresh information.

4. Allow users to add their content - modern sites suggest the possibility of dialogue.

5. Analyze sites offering the same products or services as you and find out what users are missing at the moment. Fill this niche to be ahead of the competition.

Many popular partner sites that are recognizable brands, earn not only on the partner network, but also on contextual advertising placed on these sites.

It is important to understand that affiliate marketing is developing rapidly and the ability to create a brand is necessary if you want to compete in the new conditions.