Finding good affiliate offers sometimes can be very overwhelming, especially when you decide to go for a high-volume searched affiliate offers. It is only then that you will realize how many marketers are already doing the same thing. On the other hand, if you go for low-volume searched affiliate offers, you will find that they are not worth your time, but there is a way out, which we will investigate in this post.
Spencer Mecham is an affiliate marketer as well as a YouTuber who teaches how to make passive income with affiliate marketing on his YouTube channel Buildapreneur.
He recently shared how he made money with affiliate marketing by using a keyword research tool, and below is a view of his impact dashboard.
He only did this for a few weeks, from March 1st to March 14th. You can see that it received a lot of clicks and traffic; it received 836 clicks, $759 in sales, and its total earnings after its expenses were deducted is $380. According to Spencer:
"The best part is this has not even started scaling yet and we are making progress. If we start implementing multiple affiliate programs, we can grow very quickly".
Why does this method work? According to Ogi Djuraskovic, a writer for Firstsiteguide, 16% to 20% of all annual Google Search results are new. This means that almost one in every five things that someone is typing into Google is something that has never been typed in before. It is from the use of these search entries that we will be banking on this strategy.
Though Google Keyword searches are frequently associated with search engine optimization, we are showing you how to use the skill to find excellent affiliate marketing offers that can earn us a lot of money.
How to Use Ahrefs to Do Keyword Research for Affiliate Offers
To begin, we will require a keyword search tool. There are numerous tools for conducting keyword research, but Ahrefs, a very powerful keyword research tool, is one of the best on the market. Unfortunately, Ahrefs is not cheap; it costs $97 per month, and without a free trial, you would have to spend $97 to conduct all of the research.
Since the tool only requires one or two research sessions, you can use it without paying the $97 fee. One way is to search for "Ahrefs keyword research services" on Fiverr, and you will see a plethora of gigs from which to choose. Simply contact these individuals, and they will complete the task for you for $10 to $15.
If we are using Ahrefs, navigate to the keyword explorer, this helps us figure out what people always search for on the internet.
We want to find two types of people with this tool: those who want to buy something but are not sure what they need to buy, and those who do not know what they need to buy. People in the second category have a problem and are looking for a solution. If they know there is a solution to their problem, these people are usually willing to pay for it.
Let us begin with the second group of people to make the process very easy. These people usually type the phrase "how to" which we will also input into the keyword explorer. To refine the search, we need to go over "matching terms" which will eventually lead us to what common words or phrases these people combine with the "how to" phrase.
We are going to set the global volume to be over 300 because anything that's under 300 searches a month probably isn't worth this particular method.
In addition, we are going to SERP features and exclude top and bottom ads before clicking apply now. This means that we are looking for keywords that other advertisers are not targeting because when a lot of advertisers target the same keywords on Google, the cost of ads rises. Ahref can show us difficult and competitive keyword that many big names are attempting to target so we can avoid them.
Next, we will go to "more filters" and reduce the "cost per click" to somewhere between $0.3 and $0.5. We will use $0.4 because it falls within our specified range, and then click apply.
Let us predict the outcome of the keywords: "How to take a screenshot on windows" as shown in the screenshot above. We are unlikely to make a lot of money with these keywords because it will likely take about two seconds for users to figure out their problem. As we continue to scroll down the list of results, we come across the keyword "how to get rid of gnats". Internet users will want to get rid of gnats because it is necessary to pay for chemicals to spray, special candles, or any of the other things available on the market. This seems to be a good keyword that we have, but, likely, there is not a lot of money we can make here because people spend $5 to $10 on such products, not $100 or $200.
Since our previous keywords cannot guarantee us good revenue, we should look at another popular search term: "how to crochet" which receives 55 000 searches per month. The beauty of this is that if someone wants to learn how to crochet, they are probably willing to spend some money to do so.
Spencer made a cautious note, he said,
"I want to add that as you implement this method, you are going to run into absolutely terrifying information and you are going to find some of the stuff that people are searching for online is actually pretty scary. So ignore that stuff, and continue looking for your opportunity."
Furthermore, we can research "the best" exactly the way we have researched "how to". So, we can use the keyword: "best something for something".
One of the results we have from using Ahref is "best sewing machine for beginners" which appears to be a keyword for people who have a credit card in their hand and are looking to make a purchase. Essentially, you want to have a large number of these keywords, and you can do this for an hour, or hire someone to do it for you on Fiverr.
How To Look For Affiliate Offers For Your Keywords
Now that we've identified some of the keywords we want to target, we need to match them with affiliate programs. We don't necessarily come in with an affiliate program in mind with this method, but we can search for affiliate programs that align well with our keywords. Let's start with "how to crochet" Many of these people want to learn and are willing to pay for a course, so what if we could find a crocheting course with an affiliate program?
Fortunately, Skillshare has an affiliate marketing crocheting course offer that we can join, and we will earn $7 for every new customer we refer to Skillshare. Next, we need to create a page where we can send people who are interested in the crocheting course to get more information about crocheting. After interested individuals have read the information, we will offer crocheting classes through the platform. You can create two landing pages: one for "how-to" people and one for everyone else, and wikiHow is an excellent example.
You must explain briefly with pictures and then include a short paragraph about the Skillshare crocheting course.
The other landing page is for people who use the "best" often, and it is similar to a simple sales page that will redirect people to Amazon or other marketplaces you are referring them to.
In this case study, Spencer decided to use the keyword: "Best Vocal Microphone". According to Spencer,
"These 'best' pages tend to get more clicks because these people are looking to buy something already. You don't have to convince them, you just have to point them in the right direction".
How To Set up a Google Ads Campaign for Your Keyword Affiliate Offer
Now that we have chosen the right keyword(s) that we know people are searching for, we know what we want to target, we have found the product to promote, and we have built a landing page, the next step is to create an ad that will appear whenever people search for the keyword(s). Spencer created this ad by linking the microphone sales page on Amazon to his Google ads link.
Go to Google Ads to configure the ads, and launch a new campaign.
Click search after selecting the traffic campaign.
Then, as the target site, enter your landing page URL and name it whatever you want, in this case, the best microphone test.
For the budget, we will set it to $10 since we are in the testing phase.
We will set the cost per click to $0.2 because we are running this campaign on Amazon where commissions are very low, but if you are getting $40 or $50 in commissions for the product you are promoting, you can increase this amount.
Uncheck the box next to "include the display network" Choose a location. For example, this Amazon affiliate program is only available in the United States. Then choose a language.
Do not use the keywords suggested by Google; instead, use the ones you came up with. You will put the keywords inside brackets, indicating that Google should target these specific keywords. You can also include plus signs, which means that if those three words appear in their search, Google should show them this ad.
All that remains is to enter the headline and descriptions. Write as many headlines and descriptions as you can, making sure to pin the best ones. The good news is that Google will begin testing to determine which one has the highest click-through rates.
Google will once again inquire about the site link extensions, but we are not going to implement that. We will add the call-out extensions, which are just small phrases that catch people's attention.
Finally, double-check everything and click the campaign publish button. When the ad begins to run and people see it, they will click on it, which will take them to the Amazon product page.
To summarise, working with this method will cost you no more than $97 for an Ahrefs subscription or less if you use Fiverr, and the ad expense is entirely dependent on your budget.
Income Analysis
- Total revenue: $759
- Money spent on ads: $0
- Cost of Ahrefs: $97
- Total expenses: $97
- Total profit: $662
Conclusion
To find profitable affiliate offers, we can use keyword search tools, but in this article, we discussed Ahrefs because there is a way to use it for free for a limited time before paying. Another option is to pay Ahref users on Fiverr, which will provide you with a massive list of what people are searching for. With these keywords, you can find very good affiliate offers that you can promote with paid advertisements such as Google ads.
It should be noted that this method may not work on the first product you select because you may not be able to use Ahrefs effectively at first. You must practice to be able to use it to find the best affiliate offers to promote. Also, Ahrefs' algorithm cannot be accurate all the time, so you may end up with faulty results. To manage your risks, start with a small budget for a trial, then scale up gradually as you make a profit.
