I'm having a hard time learning affiliate marketing..

I've been struggling with this for awhile now, I've read probably every single thread on bhw related to the basic start up requirements for such a project. I've even purchased a couple of tutorials on here, as a full time developer converting into something like this is becoming a very hard task for me.

Can someone please answer a couple of questions for me?
==♥==♥==♥==♥==♥==♥==♥==♥==
1. Can a website still grow via black hat methods, buying back links etc etc? If so which back links should I buy that would give me the best odds in growing a niche website for something like "Fishing Poles".

2. When doing an article on a product do you review it as if you've already purchased the product? Does reviewing the product in a specific manner make a massive difference?

3. What's the best way to include an affiliate link in a web page? Simply throwing it into an a href or creating it's own custom little portion within the article?

4. Should my affiliate sites always have social media profiles for them? If so which ones are the most important for growing a stable client base? Do I have to keep them up to date once the article mass is complete?

Thank you who ever decides to reply.. if anyone decides to reply.

They are my opinion

1. Yes but everyone has a different strategy. You should read, there are a lot of threads regarding this
2. There are many styles around, you should see what works best for you. Yes sometimes the style will change your conversion
3. I don't even mask the url but everyone is different
4. Its looks more professional with social accounts

Good guide on black hat ranking:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/m...ywords-to-google-page-1-in-30-45-days.818736/

I'm not the most qualified to answer this but anyhow.

1. The major part is finding good keywords. As in, keywords you know you have the means to rank for. This might help https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/how-not-to-do-keyword-research-in-2017.946961/. As for buying links, most people I see prefer building their own PBN as you can't really trust the link suppliers and you don't have control over the links.

2. Experiment. Search for "best X", look through some of the websites that are built for this.I don't really thinks it makes a big difference how you go about it as long as you touch on the things that a buyer might consider important.

3. I tried both a simple href with a contrasting color as well as big buttons. I can't say for certain that there is a difference as both seemed to perform decently.

4. I think this is up to you if you have a good social media strategy. i don't think people searching for info on a product they're about to buy care much about social media. Unless you have a strategy to pull people from social media to your website.

Hope it helps.

CrazyMint said:

1. The major part is finding good keywords. As in, keywords you know you have the means to rank for. This might help https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/how-not-to-do-keyword-research-in-2017.946961/. As for buying links, most people I see prefer building their own PBN as you can't really trust the link suppliers and you don't have control over the links.

Click to expand...

For building your own PBN it just requires you to purchase expired domain names right? On these domains you go for the pages that are already ranking well correct? At this point do you copy the previous article from time machine? Or you type a whole new one?

Question 1.

I keep my link building mostly in the grey area. I've not been able to bring myself to automate my link building much at all. The most black hat part of my linkbuilding is I use software to create an article (such as GSA Content Generator) or I'll scrape an article and spin it through Spin Rewriter.

I then manually edit the whole thing. I primarily only post to relevant platforms, so I wouldn't create a post on a coding forum for a site about installing fences. I probably could have scaled my sites a lot more by now, but I've also not really had problems anytime Google does an update, so there are pros and cons to consider.

Question 2.

I generally review it as though I own it. I read as many reviews as I can about the product and look for common complaints and selling points. I think owning the product, taking pictures of video etc of some of the products adds a lot of legitimacy to the site, but it's certainly not required. If the site starts making money though, I'd consider picking up a few of the products and adding your own images / video.

People will naturally assume that you purchase and review all of the products. I would also consider including a few critical reviews with some really awesome teasers. Remember, it doesn't matter why someone clicked your Amazon link (fraud aside), a click out of curiosity will still put a cookie on their computer. It may not convert as well, but critical reviews again will add more legitimacy, just make sure you're not unfairly picking on a business/product. There is no shortage of products where the owner is a complete jerk to the negative reviewers.

Question 3.

I mostly do plain text links. They seem less salesy, but I have tested a pricing table where I compare 3 products and have a "best choice" column, and that thing converts like crazy!

Question 4.

Social media accounts are horrible to maintain. You can try to automate it a bit with a plugin like Microblog Poster, but it won't be an engagement killer or anything. I would suggest only doing this if your products are social. Installing fences, for example, is probably not going to be a hot social media topic. So I wouldn't put too much time into Social Media for it. I'd be willing to test it to see if it could give meaningful leads, but overall, it will probably be a loss.

Same thing with other unsexy niches. People aren't tweeting about gonorrhea home remedies, or windshield repair kits. Feel free to test everything, but common sense can often be an OK indicator if you're strapped for time.

No matter what you do, once you strike upon a site that is making money, build it up and test anything you can. Improve the quality, because there are only two guarantees in this business:

1. Google only wants the best sites at the top.
   
2. There will only be more competition in the future.

AutomationIsKey said:

For building your own PBN it just requires you to purchase expired domain names right? On these domains you go for the pages that are already ranking well correct? At this point do you copy the previous article from time machine? Or you type a whole new one?

Click to expand...

I haven't build a PBN myself but sounds about right. Just make sure you don't leave footprints, you're emulating websites that are not connected to you (from Googles perspective).

SEO said:

Question 4.

Social media accounts are horrible to maintain. You can try to automate it a bit with a plugin like Microblog Poster, but it won't be an engagement killer or anything. I would suggest only doing this if your products are social. Installing fences, for example, is probably not going to be a hot social media topic. So I wouldn't put too much time into Social Media for it. I'd be willing to test it to see if it could give meaningful leads, but overall, it will probably be a loss.

Same thing with other unsexy niches. People aren't tweeting about gonorrhea home remedies, or windshield repair kits. Feel free to test everything, but common sense can often be an OK indicator if you're strapped for time.

No matter what you do, once you strike upon a site that is making money, build it up and test anything you can. Improve the quality, because there are only two guarantees in this business:

1. Google only wants the best sites at the top.
   
2. There will only be more competition in the future.

Click to expand...

Beautiful feed back, thank you so much for everything you said.

You build backlinks based on forums relative to the niche you're already in? Would reddit work in a similar manner say for example you have a niche about "Windshield Repair Kits" as you mentioned, would going into a sub reddit about "Car Repair" be a good idea? I've ran numerous sites before which had a heavy influx of traffic completely driven from Reddit.

Secondly, for social media I'm probably going to just go the standard route of creating a typical burner social media profile, share my links on those handles maybe tweet out a couple of things so it doesn't look spammy and be on my way. Would this have any benefit? Or should I just all around not share it at all? I remember a long time ago I was running a website which we generated a bulk of traffic from Facebook Groups does this method still work?

Sorry for the million questions, trying to figure out what to start doing and what to avoid lol.

AutomationIsKey said:

Beautiful feed back, thank you so much for everything you said.

You build backlinks based on forums relative to the niche you're already in? Would reddit work in a similar manner say for example you have a niche about "Windshield Repair Kits" as you mentioned, would going into a sub reddit about "Car Repair" be a good idea? I've ran numerous sites before which had a heavy influx of traffic completely driven from Reddit.

Click to expand...

You're welcome! Reddit is good for traffic, so I would treat it more as a traffic source than a link building opp. When you treat it as a traffic source, you get the perk of a no-follow (NF) (I've heard you can land DFs too, but I've not gotten one that I know of), but you can begin to build a presence on there that will allow you to share more of your content without it being deleted or you being banned.

You'll probably land a no-follow, but I don't think that is bad. NFs are natural, especially from a site like Reddit, and I still think that NFs pass anchor and relevancy. I've been testing using NFs on low comp keywords and I'm seeing a direct correlation with ranking increases. Now, the site I'm targeting is pretty old and a relatively authoritative site, so that is probably helping. And, the sites I'm getting nofollows from are trusted sites, so those are all probably factors. All I'm saying is don't discount NF links. I used forums just as an example, but yes, I believe relevancy is very important. I will leave a link on basically any relevant site that I can.

Secondly, for social media I'm probably going to just go the standard route of creating a typical burner social media profile, share my links on those handles maybe tweet out a couple of things so it doesn't look spammy and be on my way. Would this have any benefit? Or should I just all around not share it at all? I remember a long time ago I was running a website which we generated a bulk of traffic from Facebook Groups does this method still work?

Sorry for the million questions, trying to figure out what to start doing and what to avoid lol.

Click to expand...

I would do it just for the natural look of it. I'm not sure if Google cares at all about it, but they did pay Twitter for access to the fire hose, so they must see some value there. I wouldn't invest too much into the Twitter platform unless you want to make it a part of your traffic strategy. The life of a tweet is extremely short. If your content would fit, you'd probably have a better experience on Pinterest as the life of a Pin is weeks/months/years, not hours/minutes/seconds. It's a free and easy NF link.

So, I don't mess around with Facebook really at all beyond playing with ads and automating some links to it. I read recently that there were some people having lots of success with Facebook groups, so I think it's worth testing. I actually bought an application so I can automate it a bit, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Currently, I automate some links into Facebook just for it to look natural.

As far as page traffic, Facebook is trying to kill free referrals, so I invest very little there. I don't really work with viral niches, and that is one of the things that I think can still do really well with Facebook pages. People go to Facebook for news/entertainment primarily. Those are both niches I stay away from. The groups look like they have promise though. I also plan to test Google+ communities. Google+ is generally a terrible platform, but it's been ignored by so many people, that I think what is there would be really low hanging fruit.