I’m always on the lookout for new books on affiliate marketing, and I recently came across “Affiliate Millions: Make a Fortune Using Search Marketing on Google and Beyond,” published April 13, 2007.
The book is geared towards affiliates, and I was anxious to read it, as there are few books about the industry, and a lack of resources to provide quality training for affiliates.
To be honest, I was disappointed in the book. While the book promises the reader they can “Make a Fortune Using Search Marketing on Google and Beyond,” the approach was elementary. Not the sort of level that’s going to bring somebody their affiliate millions.
The book kicks off with explanations of affiliate and search marketing and then follows with individual chapters dedicated to somewhat intuitive processes like joining an affiliate network, applying to an affiliate program, and setting up a ppc search campaign.
Each step in excruciating detail. It seems like they were trying to reach a word minimum, rather than write a helpful guide for affiliates.
If you’re brand new to affiliate marketing, this book could be helpful in pointing you in the right direction. But if you’ve been working as an affiliate for a couple minutes, you’ll have a hard time reading beyond the first chapter.
Also, being that it’s a print book, some of the key information is already out of date.
The central theme of Affiliate Millions is that affiliate should buy traffic from the pay per click search engines and send that traffic straight to the advertiser’s site.
One of the affiliate programs prominently cited in the book is eBay. The problem with this example is that the strategy endorsed by the book (sending traffic straight from ppc search engines to advertisers) is something the eBay affiliate program no longer permits.
You will not be compensated for paid search traffic purchased from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds, if it is linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains.
Also, I noticed a screenshot in Chapter 2 (Learning About Affiliate Advertising) where a search on MSN is shown with “iPod Nano” as the keyword being targeted. The Apple affiliate program forbids buying keywords with any of their trademarked names.
Affiliate Publisher may bid on search terms from website search engines or other directory or referral services (e.g. Yahoo Search Marketing, Google, etc. collectively Search Engines), provided that (i)Publisher Affiliate’s search terms, listing titles and descriptions, and the content of their websites do not violate the copyright or any other rights of Apple or third party, as determined by Apple at its sole discretion; and (ii)Publisher Affiliate complies with the following guidelines, as determined by Apple and its sole discretion: Affiliate Publisher Ads shall not be displayed in response to a keyword query containing Apple or any other Apple trademark, not any confusingly similar term, and Affiliate Publisher will not be paid for any transactions resulting from any keyword or phrase containing search keyword (including but not limited to Apple, Apple Store, Mac, MacBook, iPod and iPhone.
So if you get Affiliate Millions, take the advice with a grain of salt. It’s a decent introductory book for the newest of new newbies.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend the book for affiliate marketers with any degree of experience under their belts.